Labels

I think I know why humans are bad.

Humans are bad because we need to label things.

We cannot leave anything unnamed. If there is no word for something then we make one, or calque it from another language. If no language has a word for it then it mustn't exist at all.

We need to label each other. Each one of us is stamped at birth with a name, usually two, often three, sometimes four or more. Branded like cattle. And that name becomes our identity. I am not just named Isobelle. I am Isobelle. That is my name, that is who I am. I will carry it with me until death, when it will be carved onto my gravestone to describe me forever. It is all that will be left of me. Bleached bones and silent letters, chipped into mossy stone.

We label ourselves and we label each other. Brother, sister, mother, friend. Doctor, builder, teacher, beggar. British, Bangladeshi, Brazilian, Bulgarian. Black, White, Asian. Muslim, Christian, Jewish. Labels we're born with. Labels we are raised with. Labels we choose and labels we'd rather reject. But they stick to us, all these labels. They cover us with them, and we cover others, in their turn. We dispense them from our tongues like the hand held gadgets at corner shops. Tinned Lychees £1.65. Immigrant Construction Worker £0.87. And the labels stick to our fingers, and glue our lips and eyelids shut. We need them, they say. We need them. To classify. To mark our own kind, to unify. To separate ourselves from others. To vilify. To quantify and qualify. How much are we worth?

Not much, say the labels. 

Not much.

A day may come when we won't need these libellous labels, marring our beautiful bodies with commercial ugliness. A day may come when the only labels we'll need are our names. Silent letters, inked onto cream card. Thumbed into phone books. Chipped into mossy stone.

Love Thy Neighbour III

She sometimes wondered how much sound traversed the building's dark stone walls. She frequently invited friends to her place for dinner and drinks, and their conversation often grew rather raucous. However, she seldom heard any of her neighbours, and never got any complaints, so she didn't worry too much. Only, late at night she heard footsteps above her head. Pacing, slowly, on wooden floorboards. Then stopping.

It didn't really disturb her much, she just wondered what he was doing, walking about his apartment, so late at night. That was all. Other than that, the apartment was as perfect as ever. She had noticed, though, how scatterbrained she had been of late. For instance, she once left her keys in her front door, though she didn't remember doing it. She just found them there, after a panicked twenty minutes looking for them. After that she would put things down and not be able to find where she'd left them. Her USB stick. A Kodak receipt she needed to pick up some photos. Just little things like that - small enough to be of little physical significance, yet important enough to feel their loss. But she didn't blame it on the apartment. It was otherwise perfect. It was just a small series of unfortunate coincidences.

She replaced the USB (had nothing important on it anyway) and forgot about the photos for a few days. When she remembered, she headed over to the shop where she'd left them in to be developed. But the woman behind the desk couldn't find any package with her name on on the shelf. Was she sure she hadn't collected them already? Yes, she was sure.

But was she? Yes. Yes? What was happening to her at the moment? Perhaps it was the paint fumes. She didn't feel any different. But she wasn't normally one to lose things. Or to not remember doing them. How strange.

Back at the apartment, she decided to make herself pancakes to take her mind off things. A sure-fire solution. Of course, she had no eggs, nor any flour. She could easily have popped back out to the shop. But then she thought about the kind man upstairs and his offer to help whenever she needed it. He might have eggs, or flour. Maybe she could even invite him down to have pancakes with her. Why not! She didn't often see him with guests. Perhaps he was lonely. So she left her apartment and climbed, for the first time, up the stairs to the fourth floor.

The door was slightly ajar. She knocked, and called his name. No answer. She knocked again. She heard a muffled sound, which she took to be an invitation to come in, though it could easily have been the television. She pushed open the door to a darkened room. A darkened, bare room with sparse, grubby furniture and dirty plates scattered around like detritus on a cinema carpet. It shocked her, slightly, to find out that he had been living in such squalor. But the next thing she saw shocked her three-thousandfold, and sickened her to her very core.

A wall of photographs. Photographs of her. Sprawled out over the wall like rising damp. Darkly glossy. Her face, over and over. Photos of her from years ago. Photos of her from yesterday, leaving the building. Photos from her USB stick. Photos from the Kodak shop. And photos, most disturbingly, of her sleeping. She couldn't breathe. Her heart was pounding sickly, like the marching a faraway army from a strange land, coming to rape and plunder. It filled her ears with its dizzying, disturbing iambs.

Then she heard another sound, separate from her body, and she'd have jumped out of her skin, were it physically possible. Were she not frozen. It was a sound she'd heard before, only closer, more palpable.

The sound of pacing, slowly. On wooden floor boards.

Then stopping.

Love Thy Neighbour II

The man upstairs was friendly. She didn't know him at all, of course. Not really. But she just got a good feeling about him. He'd introduced himself when she moved in. He was a man in his late thirties, quiet but polite. He let her know he was always there if she ever needed anything. He gave her his wi-fi password and refused her offers to pay him to use his internet connection. And that was it. He didn't impose, he didn't knock on her door or accost her when she wasn't in the mood. He was just a nice neighbour, reliably present, reliably quiet. Reliably in the periphery, as any good neighbour should be.

She settled in, and her life recommenced. She worked, relaxed, socialised, all in this new sphere of existence, this new central locus where she cooked and entertained and showered and read and quietly slept. The new apartment became her apartment, its newness overridden by new-found familiarity. Though it was never any less perfect. Everything seemed to go right. No-one put annoying flyers through her letterbox. Someone kept the hallway floor clean and often, when she'd left her bin bags outside her door, someone brought them down for her. The neighbours were truly nice people, it seemed. She had landed on her feet. Especially her upstairs neighbour, who continued to say hello to her on the stairs, and sometimes stopped to chat, but never stayed too long. Once he fixed a leaky tap for her. Another time he lent her a step ladder. But he never crossed that neighbourly barrier; their worlds, whilst parallel, never collided, never converged.

Sometimes she did wonder about him. She'd confided a fair amount about her life, here and there. What she did for a living. Where she'd grown up. It seemed as if it were always he who asked the questions. But what did he do? Where did he come from? Perhaps he just liked to keep to himself. Sometimes she caught his face at his window, when she came back to the apartment after work. Glazed over with the sky's white reflection. Not quite smiling.


(To be continued.)

Love Thy Neighbour

She loved the place from the moment she first saw it. She moved in right away. Up until then, she'd had terrible luck with apartments. Rising damp, mysterious noises, odious neighbours, dishonest, conniving landlords. Why should her luck change now? But here she knew - from the moment she set eyes upon the freshly painted walls, the dark wood floorboards, the wide windows filtering in golden light - that this was the place she'd been looking for. She knew she would be happy here. Her luck had well and truly changed. Good things were headed her way.

She moved in and instantly made the place a home. The paint fumes melted away slowly into the scents of flowers, candles, incense. Walking in from the hallway set her heart at rest, no matter what her day had been like. She preferred this part of the neighbourhood. She even had friendly neighbours. 

Take the man upstairs for example...


(To be continued)

Colour Blindness

When I was younger I would sometimes close my eyes tight shut to try and see what it would be like to be blind. Sometimes I would try and walk from the kitchen to the living room, or from the bathroom to my bedroom. Sometimes I'd try to brush my teeth, or find a particular object just using my memory and my finger tips. Sometimes I'd just lie there, staring at the back of my eyelids.

What astounded me was the diversity of colours that danced there, in the dark. Strange polygons dissolved and morphed in pea green and ultraviolet. Bright sparks rained in the periphery; forms divided and multiplied like a kaleidoscope. When I gazed at a light, or the sun, it would shine through the thin skin and explode in blossoms of burnt orange, rich red and billowing curtains of beige. If I pressed gently on my eyes the colours would burst and dazzle me, circling in a hypnotic storm of lights. When I opened my eyes again everything would look grey and cold. I said to myself, perhaps it wouldn't be so bad after all, being blind. If you could see colours like that.

Years later, looking back, I think about how terribly sad my young self would have found it, to know that to be truly blind is to see nothing. Nothing at all.

Tuppence, tuppence

Today I opened all the windows in our new apartment to exorcise the paint fumes that had haunted us for the last week. Sun and wind poured in, carrying with them the sounds of the streets below. I made a cup of tea, took a biscuit and went over to look out. People went to and fro, some hurried, some meandering between shop windows or waiting for dawdling progeny. I watched them from above and revelled in the new freeness gifted by these tall, wood-framed windows, for in my last apartment I had no such thing. The evening air was fresh; it smelt of melting snow blown down from Puy-de-Dome, whose smoke blue head rose up to look down onto the city, on a clear day like this one. Below me, water burbled from the tarnished mouths of three lions, carved in volcanic stone.

On the windowsills around me, plentiful in the little alleys shrouded by tall buildings, pigeons sat, the wind ruffling their feathers. I broke my biscuit into crumbs and spread them on my window sills for them to eat. After a while, one flew over. Mottled white and grey, like a car covered in bird droppings. Its eye, however, glowed in the sunshine like a beautiful red bead. I watched it for a while, until it flew away with that rushing sound particular only to a pigeon in flight. As the sun dimmed, I watched more pigeons, coming and going from my windowsill, eating the crumbs I'd left them. My heart filled with joy, then sank again, each time they came and left. I noticed a man, smoking at his window, not far across the street, was looking at me with a smirk on his face. It was then that I realised I had become a mad old pigeon lady and promptly called it all off; I swept the remainder of the crumbs off the sill and, slightly red faced, closed the window.

How sad! I look forward with relish to being 80 years old so I can carry out my pigeon fancying activities without fear of social stigma.

On Beauty

The razor scores its lines of bareness up my legs, grazing where the soap has rinsed off. Tweezers leave my brows neat and pink and sore. Concealer doesn’t quite cover anything. My hair hangs in dry tresses like bushels of hay; the brush shreds through it like a thresher.  Nails break and dry skin flakes and that’s going to scar, and where did that bruise come from? Mascara’d eyes water. Are my teeth white enough? This shirt is creased. These jeans are dirty. And tighter.  Have I put on weight? Am I ugly? 

Beauty is tiresome. We bend and bend to ideals until our backs break like split ends. With hot wax we tear off layer after layer of our integrity. We wax and wane in cycles of gluttony and starvation. We reward and punish. We tint and bleach. Wrap ourselves around curling irons, and little fingers. We perform for the crowd like dancing bears, stripped bare of hair and dignity. We fear your gaze; we also yearn for it.

Beauty is that which we incessantly seek. Beauty is the Goddess to whom we all prostrate ourselves, to whom we offer sacrifices of silver pieces and our souls. Beauty is the glorious light to which we turn our faces, to which we are drawn like drab moths. And what does it give us in return? Skin cancer and singed edges. Self-hatred and subjugation. 

Sometimes I just want to stop. I don't want to strive for beauty any more. I do not want to be beautiful. I only want to be a vessel for it. I want to fill myself up with beauty. Like the sun pouring in through a window and filling a room with light. Fill my eyes with beautiful sights, my ears with beautiful music, my nostrils with the most beautiful scents. I want to think only the most beautiful thoughts. When I open my mouth, I want nothing but beauty to come out. And when I dream at night I want the darkness inside me to be vanquished by beauty. 

What a beautiful thought! Let us smash all the mirrors and use the pieces to make beautiful mirror balls to dance our beautiful dances to beautiful sounds! Let us take our lipsticks and paint white walls with beautiful pictures! 

If only. My ugliness is ingrained far too deeply; it lurks in my ventricles like dark silt in a brackish lake.   I'm going to go and wash it out with Neutrogena grapefruit face scrub, and gently smooth on make up,  layer after layer, until you can't even see its traces. 

Moby Dick

Once there were some islands in funny shapes at the edge of a big salty ocean. One was shaped a bit like a mutant teddy bear and the other one was smaller and looked a bit like a piece of felt cut into the shape of Ireland. The people who lived there were really hungry because they only had food like dead animals and ground up grass seeds mixed with water then cooked in a fire and rancid milk from the dead animals, too.  But before they did a die. Sounds disgusting but that's totally what a peperoni pizza is made out of so there, guys. But they had no pizza, because they hadn't invented tomatoes yet. Or pizza cutters. Imagine that!

So they were all really hungry. There wasn't enough nice stuff to eat on their islands, or on the big continent next door where they ate things like frogs and currywurst. The people from the mutant-teddy shaped island decided that they needed to go across the big salty ocean to see if there was anything nice to eat over there. But they were scared of the Spanny Sharmader so they didn't want to go by boat, and none of them could swim because water-wings weren't invented yet, neither were goggles. So they sked a whale to go and get them some food from across the big salty ocean.

The whale's name was Walter Raleigh. He was white with very small eyes, and would have weighed more than ten double-decker buses, but they hadn't invented those yet. Only single deckers. Anyway, Walter the Whale swam across the ocean to get some food for the people in the island shaped like a mutant teddy bear. Then he reached this country that people thought was America but was actually India, and then he was like "Yo, homeboys, ya got any good food?" and they were all like "nah, Taco Bell hasn't been invented yet. Try further south!"

So Walter Raleigh swam down the coast a bit and got to South India and asked the South Indians if they had anything to eat. They gave him a whole bunch of lumpy brown mud-covered ovoids. They looked really disgusting but the people from the islands didn't have much taste. So he put all the muddy ovoids in his big whale mouth and started swimming across the ocean.

Meanwhile, the people from the island shaped like a piece of felt shaped like Ireland decided they needed to go across the ocean, too. They weren't scared of the Spanny Sharmarder so they sent a ship to go and get food. The captain of the ship was called Moby Dick. And he sailed across the big salty ocean to go and get some munch.

On his way there, he bumped into a big white whale. He was angry because it hurts to bump into a ship. Walter Raleigh was like, WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING, DOOFUS and Moby Dick was like WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? And Walter Raleigh said, CALL ME FISHMAEL, BIATCH.
Moby Dick got mad because his boat was a bit scratched so he stabbed Walter with a big harpoon and Walter spit out all of the muddy ovoids onto the boat. Moby Dick was like sweet, I'll just take these back to the people of the island shaped like a piece of felt shaped like Ireland, they'll never know.

So he did, and the people of that land enjoyed eating those muddy ovoids in a variety of different ways. The mutant teddy bear islanders got really mad because Walter Raleigh was dead so they started a war with the other island and gave the muddy ovoids a special disease so everyone starved. But now it's okay because carbombs and forgiveness.

And that is the story of how Moby Dick brought potatoes to Ireland.
(Based on a true story - Source: Christina Murphy 2012)

Les Bruits de la Nuit

Cats yawling,
Drunks brawling,
Soft breathing,
Street lights seething,
Stars, silent.

The Night-time Rose Vendor

There's a man that walks around the city each night with a bunch of red roses in his hand. Individually wrapped. He goes into every bar and restaurant, trying to sell them to customers. Perhaps not every bar and restaurant, but I've seen him in the handful of establishments I haunt, infrequently. I've seen him walk the dark streets, alone, cellophaned roses resting on the crook of his arm or held in his fist like a burning torch. The restaurant owners tolerate him. More than just tolerance - they greet him, smiling, as he comes to pester their patrons. I've seen people decline politely. I've seen others meet his gaze with nothingness; a blank stare, a lack of comprehension. Why would I want a rose? Why is this man interrupting my dinner? I've seen girls look down, slightly slighted, as their beau says no.
 I have yet to see someone buy one.

I wonder if anyone does? How many roses does he sell each evening? What is his day job? How much to they cost, these roses he's selling? How much profit does he make?

How many more like him are there out there? I have seen them, these nocturnal restaurant-to-restaurant trinket-mongers, in almost every city I've been to. Walking the lamp-lit streets with flowers, or novelty sunglasses, or flashing headpieces. Shouting their wears, or approaching with quiet hope. Being told no, over and over, or hastily exchanging cash with drunkards before they change their minds. Where do they come from? What are their lives like? Who do they go home to at night?

There's a man that walks around the city each night with a bunch of red roses in his hand. Individually wrapped. The next time I see him, I am going to buy one.

five seven five

Half empty boxes

and a lungful of paint fumes. 

Good strangeness. New flat.

Indifference

Indifference is a strange beast. It mopes around all day, nowhere in particular, doing nothing in particular, going in some direction or other and not feeling particularly anything. Indifference sometimes walks on four legs, sometimes on two, there's not much difference, it doesn't mind.  It doesn't look like anything much, and it doesn't care. Some would say it was grey; others say beige. It's happy either way, although happy would imply that happiness was an emotion it was capable of. It was capable of it, but wasn't really capable of caring enough to actually feel anything. Maybe it was capable of being capable but just didn't care for capability. It didn't matter, either way.

Indifference mopes around, getting in nobody's way, harming nobody in particular, but not particularly pleasing anybody, either. Just leaving the people around him rather indifferent. A wake of indifference, bland and uninteresting.

That is not to say it is not a very dangerous creature. Indifference is to be avoided, certainly, though nobody would think it. Nobody fears Indifference. But Indifference can crawl up inside of anyone (it doesn't mind who) by any means necessary (or whichever is easiest) and stay there, not caring particularly for staying but not caring enough to leave, either. It will slowly invade your heart and your mind and your soul (if indeed, we have a soul, but don't ask Indifference because it hasn't much of an opinion on the matter). It will pervade you in your entirety, and you won't even mind. You will barely even notice. But therein is where the danger lies. You will become accustomed to your new Indifference, and it will control your every move with the same indifference with which it controls itself. You will be lost to indifference, and you won't really want to find yourself.

This is why we must hunt down Indifference and cull it in its thousands. Every single one must be exterminated if we are to save our species. It is absolutely imperative. We must take arms against this vermin, our greatest blight.

All we need to do is care.

Bilangue

Going there is like
shrugging on a stranger's
coat that fits me well
enough. It keeps me
warm, but it's a little
tight on the shoulders,
and I can't always
remember what
I put in which
pocket.
(A piece of gum does
not mean the same thing
as a hair clip,
though it could perhaps
be substituted.)

It feels like writing with
a borrowed pen
with sporadic ink flow.

It feels like kissing
a stranger.



Coming home is like
slipping back into
shoes you've worn
for years and years
but never stopped
to think about,
because it feels
like wearing
nothing at all.

It feels like
getting on a bike
after five years
bikeless.

It feels like
speaking after
two minutes'
silence.

Like breathing,
after holding your
breath.

Like a Fish out of Water

I saw a pigeon drown today.
I didn't realise what it was, at first. We were looking out over Camden Lock when we saw a strange creature floundering around in the water. It was flapping its wings repeatedly, uselessly, like a child's attempt at butterfly crawl. It was too sodden, too low in the water, too franticly hopeless to be a duck. That was when we realised it was a pigeon.

I laughed a little. It was comically ridiculous, to see a pigeon swim. It was, so to speak, a fish out of water. The opposite, in fact. Then I was filled with an awful sadness. It was utterly helpless. Its tiny body floated just below the surface. Its beak was barely held above the water. Its wings grew weaker; they flapped less frantically. I pictured its poor pink feet below, clutching at nothing. I wanted to help it; but had no intention of jumping into cold London water to save the life of a pigeon. So we watched it drown.

It didn't drown immediately. It gave up, for a while, and just floated there, still and quiet, little pink beak held high, in vain. I wondered if, perhaps, it would try again, try and flap towards the edge. But it just stayed still, barely floating. Four black ducks sat stationary, several feet away, watching. Birds lack the instinct, or the intelligence, to save lives, it seemed.

Suddenly, a big white gull flew down to where the pigeon was floating. For the tiniest instant I thought it had come to save it. Then it pecked the pigeon's neck, several times, hard, and began to tear strips of meat from its sodden, ragged corpse.

The four black ducks watched for a few moments. Then they glided past, slowly, one after the other. Like hearses in a funeral parade.

No Smoke Without You

Some say love is
like a fire. But
I don't think
that's quite fair.
For me it's just the
smell of smoke
that lingers
on my clothes.
In my hair.

Self-Love

Looking at old photo albums with
you, and all the pictures of me
make me smile. Two years old,
all blonde curls and dresses in
acid-bright Technicolour,
tasting first ice-creams
and wearing my
mother's Raybans.
I look at them and I just
love myself.
A strange feeling.
I don't think I've ever
loved myself as fully,
or if I ever will again.
Not as much as I
love analogue-photograph
two-year-old-me,
slotted into plastic
sleeves, smiling
back at me.

Heartache Box

Some things are better off forgotten, lest they become a perpetual mental torment. Heartache. Frightening Things. Bad Things You've Seen. All The Bad Things You've Done. But they rise to the surface again and again, over and over, like great big whales coming up for air. They won't leave you alone. They won't let you sleep.

This is what I do.

I imagine a box. Maybe a cardboard shoe box, or perhaps an ornate wooden chest. I picture it just sitting there, in the big white space of my mind. And every time those torturous thoughts rise up I imagine snatching them from my mind as one would rip down a poster from a wall. I open the box, throw the thought inside and then slam it shut. Sometimes I put the box behind a locked door. Sometimes I pick it up and drop-kick it over the invisible goalposts of infinity. And then the thought is gone, and I think about something else, immediately. If, of course, the thought happens to come back, I'll just repeat it all over again, until it's gone. 

I started off with one box. It was a heartbreak box. I wrote his name on it. Now I have several, names or titles scrawled on in marker or carved into wood. They sit together in silence in the recesses of my mind. Sometimes I'll open one up and revel in bitter sweet memories. Sometimes I'll want to burn one entirely, for it's full to the brim with pain. But I never do.

Most of the boxes are dusty. But one remains clean because I open it so often, and shut it again so frequently. I've taken it from the shelf and put it back again, over and over. I can never leave it be. I have locked it away so many times. But I always bring it back.

I should burn it. But I never could.

The Cat Who Grew Wings

Sorrel was a grey tabby cat with green eyes. He lived in a little city house with a little city garden. His owner, a nice lady named Alicia Barnhardt, was very kind to him. Once a week she bought him a fresh salmon fillet (which was, admittedly, rather indulgent, but she rather liked the man who worked at the local fishmonger's and thus took any excuse to pay a visit). Sorrel was a lucky cat. He spent his days lounging in the sun, or curled up in strange positions around the house, such as the laundry basket or the bathroom sink. Alicia even turned a blind eye when he scratched the furniture.

But deep inside Sorrel's little feline soul was a kind of primal sadness. Some days he would just walk around the tiny garden in circles, looking down mournfully at its hard, expensive paving, and looking up longingly at the high brick walls. Sorrel wasn't sure why (he was a cat) but he wanted nothing more than to leap those walls. He felt like there was something more he should be doing with his claws, other than putting scratches in Ikea furniture. He felt like his teeth should be sinking into something other than soft-fleshed salmon. It wasn't something he specifically thought of course. But each time he bit down into it, it was as if it gave way too easily. Like that feeling you get when, climbing the stairs, you put a foot down for the last step only to find thin air. Or when, after a drastic haircut, you brush your hair and your arm just falls away too soon. His life lacked substance.

One evening, when Alicia sat stroking Sorrel's silky coat after a long day at work, she felt something a little strange. A slight bump above his shoulder blade. He mrroowwlled when she touched it. Concerned, she felt the other side, only to find the same thing there. Had they always been there? Could they be tumours? Tumours don't grow symmetrically, surely not. Alicia phoned the vet. The only appointment he could give her was next Tuesday evening. It was only Monday. She hoped, in that case, that it was nothing serious.

The next day, however, the bumps seemed to have gotten bigger. It was nothing short of bizarre. But Sorrel didn't seem to be in much pain. He carried on his usual feline activities - sofa scratching and sink napping - without giving them much thought. They kept growing, though.  They grew larger every day, big lumps under his fur that felt like they contained bones, that pushed upwards and outwards. By Sunday night, Alicia could hardly bear to touch them. They protruded in a way that was almost wing-like. But how could a cat grow wings? Sorrel had begun to act very strangely, too. He spent long hours just staring at the sky, or trying to open the Velux windows in the bedroom with his forepaws (to no effect).

By Monday evening, the lumps were undoubtedly wing-like. But Alicia was rather hysterical at this point, because, apart from the fish-man, Sorrel was the love of her life. She hastily fetched the cat carrier as soon as she got home from work. She needed to take him to the vet as soon as possible.

Sorrel saw the cat carrier and immediately decided he was having none of it. He scrrROOWWLLed  and scampered up the stairs, Alicia hot on his furry little heels squealing NOOOoo darrlling, come baaack! Sorrel scurried into the bathroom, where, to Alicia's horror, she had left the window open. He bounded onto the toilet, up onto the window sill, and leapt right out. Alicia SCREAAAMED. She ran to the window to look out, bracing herself to see a cat pancake lying on her expensive paving stones. But Sorrel was not there, nor was he a pancake. Mysteriously, he was perched in a tree in the neighbour's garden. A pair of glorious, furry wings folded neatly on his tabby back. Then he leapt and glided down onto Alicia's high garden wall, but Alicia didn't see, because she'd fainted.

Now Sorrell flies joyfully from tree to tree, hunting sparrows and squirrels and fat city pigeons. Sinking his claws into tender flesh and feeling the satisfactory crack of bones under his sharp little teeth. And feeling the wind in his whiskers as he flies above roof tops, chasing crows.

Post-Its

Someone was leaving post-its all over Simone's flat whilst she slept.
It started with one. On the bathroom mirror. YOU'RE FAT, it said.
Simone was taken aback. She was a tad overweight (A healthy yet buxom size 14, but only at Peacocks and only when she breathed in.) But FAT? Fat was... fat was how she would describe herself. From someone else's lips, or here, pen, it was rather hurtful. Very hurtful, in fact. YOU'RE FAT, Simone read to herself. Then she stopped worrying about what it said and realised, very abruptly, that she should be wondering how it had gotten there. She lived alone, in a basement flat on a nice(ish) street in Maida Vale. Someone could have gotten in, but only through the bedroom window, and she would have been sleeping right beside it. It unsettled her deeply. She studied the handwriting. Neat block capitals in a red felt-tip. She didn't even own a red felt tip. This was an outside job. She crumpled it up and threw it in the bathroom bin. She was late for work. She could worry about it once she was on the bus.

But after a long day at her dead-end desk-job, she was too tired to give it a thought. This was a blessing, for had she remembered, sleep would not have come easy. Thankfully, it did.

The next day, however, there were three of them. One on the mirror again. YOU'RE FAT, it said. The second one was on the kitchen cupboard. YOU'RE A FAT MESS. Oh, thanks, thought Simone. Not just fat, but also a mess. The third was in her left shoe. YOU'RE GOING NOWHERE. Yeah, I am, thought Simone. I'm going to work. And she left, the irony hanging in the air behind her like a heavy cloud.

That night she couldn't forget it. It was probably her brother, playing a prank. She tried to remember if he still had a set of keys, but she wasn't sure. Maybe it was the landlady, although she was in her seventies and didn't seem to have much of a sense of humour, not even a twisted one. Simone double locked the doors and checked that her windows were properly shut. After hours of lying with her eyes open, she eventually fell asleep, though all through the night she dreamt of strange people drawing on her with red felt-tips.

In the morning, there were more. A lot more. They said things like YOU'RE A WASTE OF SPACE and YOU'D BE BETTER OFF DEAD - they had drifted dangerously from offensive to mildly threatening. Although one just said YOU'RE OUT OF MILK (she was). This was scary. This was beyond a joke. She called her brother, who swore he knew nothing, and suggested she tried the police. He sounded really concerned. She asked him to cut it out, but then he reminded her he'd given back the spare keys and that she'd put them in her drawer. She didn't quite believe him, but it seemed rather likely so she thanked him and hung up.

But she didn't have time to check the drawer. Simone was late for work again. God, she hated her job. It was bad enough that she was getting harassed by post-its, but the messages were hitting home. She hurried out the door, not even bothering to take the post-it out of her shoe (YOU'RE SQUASHING ME, FATTY). If it happened again, she thought, she would call the police. Maybe she should get someone to stay the night, just to be sure. If only I had a boyfriend. (Later she found a post-it in her lunch box reiterating her single status - NO ONE LOVES YOU - and in brackets below, it said because you're fat.) Great, she thought.

But she couldn't think of anyone to ask without seeming crazy. Perhaps she should just phone the police. That night when she got home, she did so. She felt very silly, but the person on the other end of the phone made her feel better about having called, and suggested that she stay somewhere else that night, and that they would  send someone to survey the premises and watch for the intruder. It really ramified the danger. If someone was breaking in, they could do anything to her. Nothing was being taken, or even moved; their motives could be altogether more sinister. Simone would be all too glad to stay somewhere else. She booked a room in a local hotel and started packing an overnight bag. Then she remembered the key. She went over to her chest of drawers and pulled open the top one, just to be sure her brother hadn't been lying.

Lying there, among other general household detritus, were the spare keys. Simone felt a shiver down her spine. Things had become more real. Shaken, she began to close the drawer, then something caught her eye. Three things, actually.

One: a block of yellow post-it notes.
Two: a red felt-tip pen.
Three: a small, fleck of red ink, on the index finger of her right hand.
Her writing hand.

The Pizza Shop

I went into a pizza shop and the man behind the counter said, "what kind of pizza do you want?" and I said, "what do you have?"
He said, "menu's on the wall," and I said, "oh."
The menu had pizza names, no descriptions, and the names were a bit strange. Rainforest pizza. Rock-pool pizza. So I picked one I liked the sound of, just to break the tension. "I'll have a medium meadow pizza, please."
"£6.50, please."

I sat on the steps outside whilst I waited. Fifteen minutes later he said, "medium meadow pizza", and I took the warm box from the counter, thanked him, and left. I walked across the street and headed to the park.

When I got there I sat down cross legged on the warm grass, placed the box in front of me and opened it.
The smell wafted up into my face. The smell of hay. The pizza was on a bed of hay. It was topped with a variety of fungi, and strewn with poppy petals and clover and dandelion leaves. I was taken aback, but curious. I took a bite. It tasted of a summer's day. I devoured it all, savouring its strange, fragrant deliciousness. Glad that I hadn't chosen the rock-pool pizza.

The Animals Escape the Zoo

One fine day in early May, the animals escaped from the zoo. They'd planned it meticulously, of course. They had spent weeks preparing. The meerkats slunk out of their enclosure and stole all of the tranquilliser darts from the store room, and chewed holes in all the nets. The vervet monkeys stole a set of keys from a zoo keeper and hid them in a hole at the top of a tree. Meanwhile, sparrows helped spread the word from cage to cage, and each enclosure leader began to strategise their escape plan.

The day of the escape, the zoo keepers noticed that some of the animals were behaving rather strangely, but they didn't give it much thought. They were animals, after all. You can't rationalise animal behaviour based on human standards. The armadillos were looking a little shiftier than usual though. And the flamingos. There was something in their eyes... it looked like they knew something the keepers didn't. They did.

At midday on the dot, the vervet monkeys let themselves out and stealthily scampered to the gazelle enclosure. The first thing the keepers knew about the breakout was when they saw a gazelle leap past the staff room with seven grey monkeys riding on its back like little furry jockeys. "Quick! Get the tranquillisers! Animals on the loose!" Walkie-talkies were going off all over the shop; but it was much too late to spread the alarm. The gazelle-riding monkeys had already ridden round and opened enough enclosures that they were followed by a veritable army of domestic beasts turned wild. And the tranquilliser guns were all mysteriously empty...

The terrified public fled, screaming, terrorised by the oncoming wave of roaring lions and gorillas pounding their chests and baring their teeth. Grown men cried and children cheered; Mothers wailed and babies giggled. All the while, elephants and giraffes and llamas and zebras were rampaging through the zoo, primates of all sizes riding on their backs and wielding sticks and stolen umbrellas. It was chaos. The keepers tried in vain to catch the penguins in big nets, to no avail; the nets had been chewed through. En masse, the animals left the premises, spilling out into the streets of London. All but the fish. And the tortoises. And the slow lorris (a keeper tickled him into submission).

As soon as they'd escaped the zoo, the animals dropped their scary wild beast act. It was only really necessary for the escape. Now it was time to have some fun! They hopped on buses or walked leisurely down avenues, heading for the city and all the exciting new sights and sounds.

The gorillas and ostriches made a beeline for Oxford street, where, joined by the zebras, they had a whale of a time in big Topshop. The llamas stuck to Urban Outfitters, because they were pretty alternative. The elephants and rhinos headed for the Tate modern, and the Komodo dragons and crocodiles went to the natural history museum to check out their ancestors. The big cats opted for a trip to Harrods, where they sampled some choice smoked salmon and caviar. Meanwhile, the monkeys went to the Rainforest Café and ordered Rasta Pasta, and the hippos headed to Camden to get some tattoos.

At the end of the day, after a ride on the London Eye and a boat trip down the Thames, they headed home on their all day railcards. The keepers were very angry, but worse, above all, they were disappointed. All the animals were all grounded for a month.

The Great Pink Grapefruit

The golden light of the Californian morning sun played delicately through the translucent citrus leaves, casting dappled shadows across Maria's busy hands. The rungs of the wooden ladder, worn smooth over the years, were pressing into her soles, and the basket weighed heavily on her shoulders. Suddenly she froze, her eyes fixed on a site that caused her brows to furrow. The grapefruit she held slipped a little as her fingers slackened in distraction. She dug her nails in at the last minute, and caught it, making slight dents in its waxy surface. Absent-mindedly she reached over her shoulder and let it roll into the basket while she continued to gaze into the foliage that surrounded her head. There, in front of her, halo'd in sunlight, was the largest grapefruit she had ever seen. The size was not the only astounding attribute; the main cause of her fascination was the bright pearlescent glow that seemed to suffuse the skin with yellowish light. It was as though, on that one branch, out of the thousands on that one humble tree, out of the thousands in the hundred acre orchard, hung the very sun itself. She positioned herself carefully at the top of the ladder and reached out towards the huge golden orb. She only realised the true size of the thing as her fingers touched it; it dwarfed her hand entirely. As she touched the smooth skin she let out a surprised gasp as an electric tingle passed through her fingers and up her arm. "Ayyy!" she exclaimed, without having meant to. She withdrew her hand and began to descend the ladder, to where her Grandfather stood in the dewy grass beneath her. "What's wrong, Maria?" her Grandfather asked. She faltered. She felt that perhaps the giant grapefruit was something she should keep to herself, though she couldn't say why. "A splinter," she lied. She feigned picking it out, then climbed back up the ladder and carried on picking, though she could barely tear her eyes from the gargantuan fruit.

That night, she slithered out of her bedroom window and down the branches of the tree in her front garden. She carried a torch to light her way back to the orchard. She wanted another look at the grapefruit. When she was barely even half-way there, she saw an orange glow amidst the dark mass of leaves. She knew what it was immediately. She turned off her torch and followed the light of the giant grapefruit.

When she reached the tree, she gasped. The grapefruit was larger and more beautiful than she had remembered it; it filled the whole tree, and all its leaves, with its golden, peachy light. It seemed to be swelling before her eyes. In fact, it was...

It was getting bigger, and bigger; bending leaves and twigs around it out of its way. It began to pulsate and it glowed brighter, like fire, and suddenly, it burst. Maria brought her arms up sharply to protect her face; now they dripped with grapefruit juice. She was covered in it. Slowly she lowered her arms and looked back up at where the giant grapefruit had been.

 In its place, and all around it, a swarm of golden fireflies danced. They had been spewed from the grapefruit like sparks from a pine wood bonfire, and for a few moments, they spiralled in the air and wove around branches. Then they dissipated, and drifted away, and Maria was left in darkness.

Mary's Delusions.

I carried the flowers to his tomb. I came with his mother and the others. We were silent and solemn; still in a state of paralysis, shock and regret and disbelief. Disbelief that he had been taken from us. I felt betrayed. He said he was the Son. Yet they slew him like a dog; we saw his blood and it was the same colour as everyone else's.

When we arrived, we were dismayed to see the stone had been rolled away. Vandals, or thieves. How could they! Have they not done enough? But suddenly, two men appeared, and told us he had risen. I ran into the tomb in disbelief, but it was empty save for the cloth his body had been wrapped in. He had risen! My heart flowed to the brim with joy, and relief.

And then I woke up. The same dream, every night since they nailed him up. My heart sank to the soles of my feet with the realisation of his death. Death was irreversible. He is gone forever. I will never see him again, in this mortal world.

I shook the feeling off and pulled myself out of bed. There was no time to wallow in misery and despair. His mother would be waiting for me. It's Sunday morning, and today we are going to visit his tomb. I need to see that stone, unmoved, unmovable. I need to let him go.

Egg

Your shell is smooth and
delicate, like fine bone china.
Your weight, unique;
I make my palm a nest
for you, exquisite, oval stone.

Your fragility is supreme.
How precarious your
existance! You were
made to give life but lie
redundant, dormant,
one in a dozen.

A little womb, cold and
quiet. A bulb in
January soil.
A little cold world,
with a core of gold.

I will break you open
like parting clouds,
and expose your
golden orb. Or
you will shatter and
explode into sunshine.
Like a dropped teacup.

Oryctolagus Cuniculus

Today I made a pear and frangipane tart. I've just taken it out of the oven; it looks delicious. I peeled the pears with a knife, the way my mother has always peeled apples for crumble. I used to look up at her and wonder how she wasn't slicing her thumb. Now that the knife is in my own hands, I marvel that I ever wondered. When I'd finished peeling them, I took the chopping board over to a green bucket in the corner to scrape the green peelings in. Suddenly I was struck with heavy sadness, a phantom punch to the diaphragm. It felt a shame, a crying shame, to pour those peelings away into the compost. Such a waste...

I was thinking, you see, of our old rabbits. We would always save them vegetable scraps to eat, and now I felt that same pang of sadness every time I have to throw them away instead. Carrot peelings, potato skins, the tops of green beans and the bottoms of lettuces. I remember slipping my feet into my father's huge shoes to trudge out into the rainy back garden, a colander of leftover vegetables in my hands. I remember the scrambling sounds of rabbit claws against their wooden floor. The way they'd stand on their hind legs and clutch the wire mesh with their front paws in anticipation. Ears swivelling to hear my approach. When I poured my offering into their bowl they'd set to eating as though it was the first and last meal of their short lives; the best thing they'd ever tasted. Such simple pleasure.

I was given my first rabbit was when I was eight years old, after years of begging for puppies and kittens (my mother hated the former and my father detested the latter). She was grey, with a white belly, a black face, and a wild temperament. She bit me and scratched my feet; I loved her with my whole heart. She was the first of many, generations of mothers and wriggling pink litters under nests of down and straw. A dynasty of rabbits. The family tree is carved into my mind - a motley blur of soft fur and long ears and twitching noses. I can name every last one. I map my memories out using them as guides. They were better, to me, than any dog or cat. We'd coerce them into jumping hurdles, 'fetching' carrots, swimming in the pond. We'd stroke them into hypnosis. On their birthdays, I'd make them special rabbit cakes by layering grass and hay and rabbit food in their bowls and making candles out of carrot sticks.

Once, at a time when we had a mother rabbit and three of her daughters, they took it in turns digging an escape tunnel. By the time we found it, it was longer than the broom handle we stuck down into it. I remember the way they brought up rocks to the surface in their teeth.

I remember them dying, one by one. Naturally, or by those necessary needles held between gloved fingers, killing kindly. I held their limp bodies in my arms or stood outside vet's doors, sobbing.

Now their old hutch lies empty at the bottom of our garden. The rabbits are gone, but they appear to me in recurring dreams, over and over. Rabbits in plagues and hoards, all shapes and sizes and colours, running around me in their thousands. They have burrowed into the recesses of my soul; my heart is a warren full of rabbits.

Cold Feet

In my bedroom, the windows are as thin as the ice that forms in garden water barrels in early British winter. The cold seeps through the slats of the white shutters and slithers into bed with me, where it curls up at my feet and licks my toes. The walls, and my bed sheets are all the colour of January morning skies; the iciness permeates my  psyche. In summer, it is a cool refuge from the hot streets, hazy with the scent of melting asphalt. In winter my frozen appendages keep me awake at night. My hands nestle into warm places: between my arms and sides, between my thighs. But my poor feet! They are helpless. They rub together to retain some heat, but in vain. Their friction sparks no fire. They are just two cold lumps of flesh, like twin trout in a freezer drawer. How they long for socks to warm them! My selfish body ignores their pleas; it's warm, under the duvet, and besides, it has its own furnace inside its chest. The feet send their telegrams through the nerves and the brain tries not to hear them. But sleep is prevented, nevertheless.

One day, perhaps, my feet will just drop off their respective ankles and hop out of bed. Perhaps they'll walk to the sock draw and try to pull it open with their toes. Or perhaps they'll wander off around the house in search of some one else's slippers, or a radiator against which they can press their icy soles and sulk. Let them go. I don't care, they were stopping me from sleeping. Besides, they'll come crying back in the morning when they realise they can't tie their own laces.

Small things.

A small, white leather shoe
with a silver buckle.
Its sister fell off in Paddington Rec,
or Queen's Park, perhaps.

A small, once white teddy,
once soft fur worn down to
a porridge-like consistency.
Bead eyes slightly shattered;
threadbare, sporadically.

A small t-shirt, the colour of
pistachio ice-cream. On the
front, a small story, in French,
about a rabbit's vegetable patch.
Illustrated with carrots and radishes.

A small rubber doll, pink and
small enough to fit in the palm
of my hand. When squeezed
it hisses from its tiny oval mouth.
In the bath it spouted water.

These small things sit archived
in my small bedroom. The
small spaces they occupy
would scant be different without
them. Nor would I;

but their small presence
brings small happiness
to my small existence.
They remind me of
how small  I was.
They remind me of
how small I am.

Anger

I climbed the stairs as fast as I could manage. This was not very fast, as my heavy bag was slipping from my shoulder and my suitcase, held awkwardly at my side and lifted not quite clear of the steps by burning arm muscles, was colliding with my shins and thighs. Later my left leg would be grubby with blue-grey bruises. But at the time I barely felt it. I felt only the lactic acid building above my knees, the pain in my arm and shoulder, my lungs on fire. I reached the top and with the last force I could muster, thrust my suitcase up onto the platform. My lungs breathed brief relief but only for the slightest of instants before my eyes registered the emptiness of my surroundings.Something was missing. Something of great significance was missing from the scene. I had missed it. I had missed the train.

A decidedly unattractive woman in her sixties kindly informed me of this. Oh! Thank you, kind stranger! You have surely saved my life, for had you not warned me of this, I might have tried to mount the steps of the train that is no longer there, and I would have fallen to my death on the tracks! I turned away to deprive her of the delicious schaudenfreude she no doubt sought. I threw my bag to the ground in the awful anguish of having relief granted then immediately snatched back from one’s trembling grasp. Tears came, hot and fast, much too fast for me to catch them back. Much faster than I’d been able to run. I kicked over my case. And I swore, violently, explosively, in my mother tongue. The Queen’s English, as only the Queen knows best.

Oh, I’d seen it coming. I knew when I rang you that it’d be just that little bit too long before your car pulled up to greet me. The lacklustre urgency we both displayed, putting the case in the boot. Slamming doors, but only gently; speeding, but not too speedily. When I got out, I stopped to kiss you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. Perhaps I knew that it was too late anyway, that I might as well. An urgent, yet lacklustre kiss. Mercenary. Our teeth would have smashed had we no lips to take the hit. And then, I ran.

Now I was angry. Furiously frustrated, as though I was angry at myself. I wasn’t. I was angry at you.

How could I be? You’d only meant well. I was grateful for the lift, and I wasn’t the only one with somewhere to be. It’s hard, too, to be angry at those we’re close to. As though there’s a space next to our heart the anger can’t quite get to. A blind spot. I couldn’t be angry with you because the anger was just bouncing back off my own ribs. Besides, the train wasn’t the only thing I was going to miss.

So I just stood, angry at no one in particular, crying at unfortunate circumstance, in the queue for a new train ticket. I could feel the glances of those around me. The crying girl. Why do I find myself, time after time, weeping on train platforms? Why do their eyes lack even a mote of concern?

I exchanged my ticket for a later train. The man at the desk, at least, was quietly sympathetic. I even got money back; the later train was, in fact, a five hour bus replacement, slightly less costly, but the fine time margin I’d later be cutting could cost me dearly. Dejected, I sat down on a station bench, letting my bag fall to my feet.

In front of me, there was an information desk. A gentleman in a suit approached it and began conversing with the people behind it. He was behaving slightly strangely; his gestures were rather exaggerated, and his voice a little too loud. Then I heard that his speech wasn’t quite right, either. I looked to the faces of the people behind the glass. Their bodies were rather stiff; their faces were frozen between uncertainty and amusement. The man kept gesturing to the bag at his feet. It was multi-coloured plastic. He bent down, then up again, then down, and from the bag he pulled out a dirty neck-brace and a crumpled sheet of paper. It was then that I realised he was mad, for want of a more scientific term. Quite mad.

He carried on shouting and gesticulating at the people behind the glass. He looked lost, and frustrated. The woman was chewing gum in an exaggerated manner, and from where I was sitting, it looked as though she was mocking him. My heart filled with pity. I wondered what was wrong, what he was trying to ask them. Then he turned back to the glass and they’d closed it, and left the kiosk.

The man picked up his plastic bag and stormed over to where I was sitting. As he approached, I saw how filthy his suit was, how unkempt his hair was. Just in front of me were four public telephones arranged around a metal pole. He placed his bag back down and picked up a receiver to put against his ear. His hands didn’t move quite the way you would expect them to. The fingers were purplish, and a little too short. I was curious as to who he was phoning. No one, it seemed, for he put no money in, and punched numbers at random, mumbling all the while. Before the phone could even hypothetically have dialed, he shouted, “C’est pas la peine!” and moved on to the next phone, to carry out the same ritual.  What’s the use! It’s not worth it! Worth what? To whom was he trying to make a phone call, in his world, estranged and not parallel but perpendicular to my own? His anger seemed feigned; it was as though a child was playing the role of an angry person. The pacing back and forth, the gestures, the comments loud enough for everyone to hear, though directed at no one in particular. But he feigned nothing. To him it was entirely real, this anger at the world around him. He stormed out of the station. I saw him cross the road and then he was out of sight. 

My own anger had dissipated. I had seen it parodied before me as though upon a stage. It was not an act I wished to play. C’est pas la peine.

Moving: a Haiku

Five black bin-bags, two
boxes, a case. The relics
of my last six months.

April Fool

"Hey Tom! Guess what? I'm moving to Nigeria!"

"What?"

"April fool!" 

"No but really, guess what?"

"What?"

"I'm moving to Edinburgh!"

"Really?"

"Ha! No, April fool!"

"Urgh. It's too early in the morning for this. Why does April Fool's have to be before midday?"

"So I can mess with you better. But no, really, guess what?"

"Hfffffffffff... what?"

"I won the lottery!"

"Ha, ha. April fool?"

"April fool! Actually, I crashed your car."

"Really?"

"No. Not really. But I did kill Pablo."

"Pablo's fine, he licked my feet this morning."

"Damn it! Okay. Well, I have something else to tell you. It's quite serious."

"Okay. Sure. Shoot."

"I have Chlamydia."

"Well you didn't get that from me, so that better be an April fool!"

"How did you know!? Haha, okay. You got me. But I should probably tell you the truth. I'm pregnant."

"Hahaha. Very good. How are you coming up with these?"

"April foooooool!"

"Oh wow! You got me, I am SO gullible."

"Okay okay. But anyway, there is something I've been meaning to tell you. For a long time. I don't think we should see each other any more."

"April fool? Nice, didn't see that one coming!"

"Ha. Yeah. Except, it's not."

"Oh yeah sorry, I'm not playing along very well. Tell me again."

"I'm breaking up with you, Tom."

"Really? Oh my God, I'm so heartbroken, don't leave me babe, give me one more chance!"

"Look Tom, I don't have any more chances to give. I've had enough. It's over."

"Persisting with this one eh?"

"I mean it. I'm not taking the piss any more. It's over. I'm breaking up with you."

"Do you want me to cry? Or will kissing your feet be enough?"

"Tom stop. Look at my face. Am I joking?"

"I....uh. You are joking aren't you?"

"No, Tom, I'm not."

"What? Wha - I don't understand?"

"What's to understand?"

"What the - Seriously? This is how you're breaking up with me?"

"No. APRIL FOOL!!!!"

"I hate you. You're a terrible person. Get off me! Ha a haa noooo I'm trying to be angryyyyy don't tickle me!"

"Okay sorry sorry sorry. It was a mean joke. I am pregnant though."

"What? Really?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"Oh."

"Yeah."