set

The night seems more sacred to me, somehow, than the day. The day is empty with calendar; anxious. The night stretches into the forever-future. It is a place for living and holds no finishing line.

In all this convict, still, I need the sun.

So: I have been shocked by my own eyes. Mirror showing them carved in frozen Arabics from my insistently wandered carpet-fueled dreams. These hieroglyphics seem no worthy trade-off for productivity (or at least, for restless peace).

I have seen my skin, in passive outcry, imitate sun-ripped fly-shit speckled ceilings. The carriers of my second selves have gripped tight in defiance, wrenching me into irregularity or nil. My arms and stomach have mimicked face with small heated secrets. My lowest sense has cried out at me too; cried, What are you doing? and wept at my stubborn decisions. Not that I have cared. I have not listened to any of these bodily protests.

So: I have been shocked by my own eyes. All the tea bags in the world cannot save them. The newest paper sends them red; the clattering baking trays send me wandering into the night. Having adopted medicine, my insides full of malice practice reverse psychology and wash rivers out of me; though giving me my own face back I am still sent into cathartic doubling at the ribs as soon as I am bleeding. No compensation at all. It seems the more I do well for myself, the more I am reprimanded when I deviate. All the daily poisons become more poisonous the longer I abstain.

Like the guilty conscience that has haunted me since childhood, the fourth and the ninth commandments ally. Leaving me wondering, Where do nocturnal animals get their vitamin D? 

from this morning

I woke this morning and knew that I had dreamed:
    Of some foreign forearm grazing my side; phantom lips not quite kissing but sort-of gently rested next to mine; my face huddled somewhere near a strangely angled neck; and the body of the world all around us.

coffee
tea
sugar
movie
music
words
adrenaline
awake

common

after Leon, Joe,
I swear I saw the salt creep into your live eyes
the same: the day I split myself from spitting Matilda's lover
having, until then, split for

(though, forgiven -- easy to mishear
as Gus and Gwil hold your voice in their throats, too)

Ms, too
whispered to me like a gun in my mouth
being dragged willfully around this lemon-condensed apartment
I would
and her prickled pre-pubescent legs dangled into my taut throat

who did she give herself too, in that pink dress?

boy barely mutters the word 'snatch'
-- so,
how did you snatch yourself from...
I suppose, he the old man
but then goes from ember to soot-stained pillows

but how did she exit those eight quiet gestures?
(under her concrete-sodden pillow, of course)
shit them all, beautiful

beauty left no good
stripped in waves,
or something.

Comes the new man.

...but surely, subtle hands need leed, too 
even new

thus man (boy)
snatches snatch's vowels in grenade-pinned honour
knighted common
'til the bloodflow leaks of all the buildings we've traversed
marking all those who are and refuse to be 

(come on)
still in hand, and head
there's silence without applause
slighted wrongly, adverse 
and then hearts (subtle lead)

man wails -- 
with no good to remain
but stripped in waves:
something

banter / ted-y bear

"...and then I started watching TED talks instead of having sex," she explains to me. "So in the end, it was fine. I became educated." The corners of her mouth stretch horizontal. She picks up her coffee cup. "And really, that's what men prefer anyway. Someone who knows things about the world, you know?"

Jesus, I think.

"Yeah probably," I say.

She places the coffee cup back into its saucer and sneaks one - nope, two - sugar packets out of the glass in the centre of the table.

"You know, I've been reading a lot about all those artificial sweeteners," she carries on, "and I think-- they're actually much worse for you than just real sugar. I mean, sugar is a plant -- right? It's a plant. Why on earth would you choose a chemical over a plant? That's just--"

"Well, I suppose--"

"Ridiculous."

"Well... Well I don't know, really."

"Neither did I until a few weeks ago. Seriously, I thought that I was being really healthy. You know, cutting out all my sugar. But it turns out -- I read this online, on this nutrition blog that I follow -- it turns out that actually sugar isn't as bad for you as aspartame--"

"As what?"

"Aspartame -- and yet, most of those diet soft drinks are chocka full of the stuff. It's really, really bad for you. Really bad. Like, it could kill a cat. A small kitten. You know?"

"Chihuahua cat."

"Exactly! So there's all these women -- well, men too, I suppose -- men and women... Sorry, women and men." She pauses. "People. There's all these people wandering around-- well, they're-- anyway they're going through their lives, truly believing that they're doing a good thing. But actually, they're more or less putting poison into their bodies."

"Do you miss the sex, though?" I ask her.

She places her spoon down parallel to the table edge.

"What?"

"Pardon," I correct her. "Do you miss the sex?" My spine moves back into the chair slightly.

"I... Well yeah, of course." She looks down at her coffee. "But good things have come out of it, you know? I mean, a year is a long time doing the same thing. The same person. Sorry that came out wrong. You know what I mean. Anyway. It's a long time. Well, not at our age, I know. Well I suppose not in general, really -- but it's still a long time. In terms of doing something you're not fully into."

Her eyes follow a guy to the till. He looks a mature twenty.

"The thing is, Natalie." Her eyes return back to me and she looks me very squarely in the eyes. She puts her elbows and palms down flat so that her forearms are running in my direction across the table. "I am a better person now. I am my own person. Now, I am ready for a proper relationship. I wasn't before. That is why it didn't work out."

She reclines back into her chair, point made.

"Well it worked for a year..." I offer.

"It worked for a year. But I want more than 'worked'. I want-- I want..." Her eyes search the ceiling: "--all kinds of things. Maybe some of them are a little unrealistic. But I have high ideals now. Ideals that could only have come from this break up." Hands groping the coffee cup again. Groping. Groping.

I tell her, "You're groping your cup."

"What?"

"Pardon."

"What am I doing?"

"Pardon you. You're groping the coffee cup," I say.

"What do you mean, groping?"

"I mean you're groping the mug. Like, the way you're holding it. That's not normal. Most people don't hold their cups like that; that's why it's got a handle."

She looks down at her grip. Back at me. Tips her head down slightly.

"I think you're over-analysing this."

"I'm not, I promise."

"You are definitely over-analysing this."

"I really don't think I am," I assert. "I'm not. I don't over-analyse!"

This is probably not true. I feel a little bit bad.

"Hey, sorry. I didn't even say anything. Like, I'm not telling you that you groping your coffee cup means something particular or anything like that. I'm just saying: you're groping your coffee cup and most people don't do that."

She squints her eyes, shakes her slowly head side to side and squeezes the words out of her mouth. "You -- are -- such -- a -- shit," she says.

I shift in my chair. "Oh honestly, Cassie, don't talk to me like that."

"Like what?!"

I look at her, straight on. "Don't call me a shit."

"Well you are." She shuffles in her chair now, lengthens her back. "You're being a shit."

I tip my head sideways. "Well thanks."

Then there's temporary silence. I turn my eyes to follow the direction of my head, profile to her; I see out of my peripheral Cassie turns her gaze the opposite way.

After a moment I ask her, "Who are you looking at?"

"I'm not looking at anyone."

"You are. I can tell."

"I'm not."

"Is it a guy? Who are you looking at?"

"Look, Natalie--"

"No, who are you looking at..."

"I don't have to be looking at someone, okay? Maybe I'm just... thinking."

"Oh yeah? About what?"

"I'm just thinking, ok? Not that I can, when you keep friggen scrutinizing how I'm holding my goddamn coffee."

She levels her head back to face me across the table.

"I told you, men like women who think about the world." More of that awful shuffle-shuffle-lengthen-spine. "I'm thinking about the world."

"Oh. Sure."

She just shakes her head at me.

"Such a shit."

"Yup. Got it."

We have a miniature staring competition. Neither of us wins. Or loses.

"So what are you doing with the rest of your day?" she asks my pupils.

"Nothing," they tell her.

"That's pretty fucking boring."

"I'm a pretty boring person."

"Mm, don't know why I bother actually."

"Bother what? Bother informing me about the dangers of sugar?"

"It's--"

"Ranting about your sex life."

"Natalie--"

"I feel a bit voyeuristic with you sitting there groping your cup, actually.."

"Natalie!"

"What?"

"Pardon," she corrects me.

"Touche," I shrug. "What, though?"

She looks down at her gropey fingers.

"Man. We both really need to get laid, huh."

"Yeah." I lower my eyes to bury my secrets into the floor. Cassie thinks.

"But only with the right person though. For me, I mean - you can do what you like. But I'm not settling for anyone who doesn't match at least six of my ten basic relationship sensitivities list--"

"Your what, now...?"

"That's the absolute minimum. Maybe if he was really hot... No. No, six. At least six."

"You are crazy Cassie."

"Hah! At least I'm not a shit."

I shrug again.

"I don't think I'm a shit."

"You are."

"Ok."

"But not in a bad way."

"Sure."

"I still love you."

"Great, thanks for that."

"I do. I really love you, Natalie. Even though you are a shit."

"My god girl, mixed messages--!"

"That's possible! It's possible. I loved Mark, even though he was pretty awful sometimes. Even though he could be a shit, he was worth loving. For the most part."

"If you say so."

"I do say so. For the most part, his good outweighed his bad."

"Ah, but yes, see: There's the catch. For the most part. For the most part is not enough, is it? What did you say before-- '...more than just working...'". 

"Yeah, well that's why we--"

"I know. I know. But how do you know where that point is? The point where you say, 'TED talks are going to be more beneficial to me than you. I would rather watch a funny looking old man on my computer screen tell me things than have a nice looking young man in front of my face.'"

Cassie thinks for a moment.

"It's the point where you look at the person in front of you," she says, "but in you're head you're actually watching the TED talk."

"So instead of wondering about that person, you're wondering about the world."

"I think so," says Cassie. "Something like that."

avalon

Avalon's name is haunting me
the road home
the shitty corner bakery
(named after the road home)

her body...
she's still sleeping on my fold-out couch
tipping ash all over the front porch
dangling her smooth legs over the rotting wooden rails
cleaning up the bathroom vanity to a perfect polished white

I'd have her back, though
if her hands were clasping those small, expensive cylinders

an instance / how I have seen us

This is one instance of how I have seen us:

We could be spines against the wooden floor, quasi-horizontal, comparing daydreams. That would be nice.

I can pull our fortunes out of the garden rocks (they live in parallel universes, across times, like us). I'd hold my blue fingernails around my neck -- around my blue necklace; your fingers might sit somewhere near mine. Or not. Yours might sit closer to you, and this would be good.

Ocre bottles sitting like a seance around us, but not too many. Not all empty. Steady and benevolent. Just there. They're balanced on thick novels and burnt wooden paperweights, all stacked into columns of differing height. Us, too, of differing heights, not only by genetics but the angles at which we lie. A cosy crooked arrangement.

I would find a scrap of torn up newspaper, and a thin-nibbed pen; I would begin writing. It doesn't matter that you are watching. I'm writing about you. It doesn't matter that you are reading. Reading about you. About You. I am writing.

Then I wrap us completely up in newspaper, and all the inky words of the newspaper and my own words (which are words about you) sink into us and singe through our skin... we absorb them all, they all filter into us and burn through our veins into our organs. We know all these words as they enter into us. They are satisfying and legible. So that for a short time, we feel some sense of complete.

thoughts on time travel

Scouring each city, now
's the target
and we win this year-long game
finding him

six months above
(my younger half)
better honest at twenty-and-five, now twenty-one-and...
last I forgot yours
now forgets to ask mine, and so I
decide to forget to tell
more direct questions for me
instead, anyway.

... As when I jumped on Sano's sleep
with my first height,
Saturday's child
in his first height, supposedly
snatches my hand to carry me up Regent
(the very first being Rydges, now I remember)
"I don't believe you," I said
prying his sparkling passive
eyes open

"I am," he said.
"I am I am I am."

I doubted.
Though granted, in the morning:
Something Changed.

eighth/first

It was fine to feel my back scritching against the ground. Clothed. Tolerable ... unlike your poor bare knees. That's the advantage of wearing a dress: you don't have to take it all off.

Your patellae were making little dents in the dirt; the stones and pine needles making small dents in your skin. You pointed them out later as if they weren't worth the trade-off.

No, you didn't mean that. I know. I know.

Let's play a game, as we wandered outside. How much time can we waste? I knew I'd have to instigate. I almost always do. People - New Zealanders, especially - are so bloody polite. It really kills me. Especially when it starts leeching into my own manners like some contagious etiquette-borne dis-ease. I hate that tentative feeling curling around my skeleton.

Pull me down, I urged with my wanted telepathy. Bet you won't. Go on. And then, to myself: That's not fair Natalie, to set someone up for failure. And then; My GOD just DO IT just -- ! Stop sitting with safety!

No, you stop, Natalie. Grow. Up.

I played this solo waiting game for an impatient ten minutes: hand on the tree, diligently observing its knots; How was your week? etcetera. Feigning concern that some drunk had followed us (I couldn't really care if they had; good on them).

And then I did the same thing I always do. I acted on my impatience, discipline-less. I followed through with the course of action I'd already decided. Resenting that I'd decided. Oh, pragmatism.

So much safety in the world.

I could have been fourteen again. Nestled in the edges of Ohope sand dunes, leaving human-sized holes in the beach. My hair in the same bobby-pinned coiffe. The alcoholic scene in the background. The pines looming over us in the dark. Only this time, I find myself thinking, eight others behind me. My hand guiding us forward (or backwards, to the ground).

Afterwards, a quick sweep of hand over back of hair. But, half-heartedly. Everyone knows. People aren't stupid ... when it comes to things like that. Thanks and I'll just go over here (alone) and Oh my, I'm bored as fuck now. Dance dance. "Bored as fuck". That's an unfortunate term, isn't it?

With eight behind me (in life, not just in love), having a small part inevitably then wants for it all. The walls and the tinnitus and the horizontal and the glitter; the burning eyes and nose and throat (from various self-afflictions); the handstands up against cars. Leaping over bonfires. The broken mirrors that bring lucky bleeding nails; the lace blouses... The whole frantic chaos of Chevalier-Parkfield-Cross.

Wanting all of this. I looked around. And the world seemed slow. Neutral -- most on two feet, vertical. Drink in hand, compliantly. The music a background -- non-diegetic -- effect. Costumes now redundant (and ridiculous, hilarious).

There's no point in leaving sober when their 'drunk' is your fallow. I'm a fan of stillness, I am. I am. But not of mundanity.

Let's go back to fourteen, my little head beckons. Let's go back to people. Let's go back to worn-out Wellington.