The End

And so we sat on a red tiled roof four stories up, looking out on the town glittering with the streetlights in the dark, and we could have fallen to our deaths but we didn't care, because as we know alcohol sucks the fear from your heart by osmosis. And there we sat arm in arm and you were saying words to me that touched me right in the soul, although I can't remember them precisely because the alcohol blurred them like ink on paper. And though we weren't watching our watches we heard voices crying out across the town, dix, neuf, huit, and the light was all golden, sept, six, cinq,and we held hands I think, quatre, trois, deux, and suddenly the whole year came back to me rolled up in a ball, made small, every thing I saw everything I smelt tasted heard every word I said every word my fingers scratched out, typed out, everything, all at once, cancelling each other out so that in effect it looked like nothing, felt like nothing, un.

Bonne année!

nothing.
everything.
I love.

you.

It was pancakes, actually

I wake.
Above me, my clothes,
hanging next to your clothes above the bed
and you're gone I don't know where,
though from the kitchen
I can smell something
cooking and it
smells like
a future.

The Gift

You sit on a bench in bright sunlight, grinning because I hadn't seen you and had walked the other way
and I'm a bit annoyed because I've got a heavy case and because you didn't bother standing up although I'd come all this way. Beside you is a longboard and I think it's yours. The wheels are the same but the board is different. "You've changed your board", I say. You flip it round to show me. It has new grip. Bright blue. "Do you like it?"
"Pas trop," I say. "Too flashy."

Your face falls. "Its for you."

I'm shocked and silenced. Sorry.
"Tu l'aimes pas?"

It's not that I don't like it no no not at all. I just wasn't expecting it. I said I wanted to learn but I probably didn't mean it. No I definitely didn't. Its just one of those things I say sometimes. What am I going to do with a longboard? It's heavy it doesn't match my shoes I'm going to fall off I'll be terrible I'll look stupid people will laugh at me. And now I've hurt your feelings.
I feel a little burdened. I say nothing.

"I can change the grip. Any colour you like. I can take it off."
I hold your hand and see where the skin has been left rough putting it on in the first place. I sense the hours you'd put in making it neat and perfect for me. I sense the disappointment you're trying to hide.

"Maybe tomorrow you can take me for a ride?" And if I fall off and hurt myself, at least I can say I tried.

Je viens te voir

Here I am again.

Though I've not been here before.

Sleeping on the floor of a ferry

midway across the La Manche in the middle of the night.

Different places, modes of transport,

destinations, even;

but the same feeling in my chest.

Like I'm some pilgrim come to see

a holy relic

(you.)

Days

It seems the days have slipped away like water through a sieve. Looking back into the sink they seem somewhat foreshortened, as though they went quicker than they did. It's a trick of the light, at least, they taught us that in school. And it is, it truly is. Each second took as long as every second has ever taken and the days of our childhood passed no slower, nor any faster. Tell yourself that. Tell yourself that though the year is almost gone it was nonetheless a year of as many seconds, minutes, hours as any other. That you were bored for hours. That you waited in queues for hours, that you were happy and sad and happy again for hours and hours and hours. In your head it's flattened down into some kind of box of photos and you'll say, 'where did the year go?' because that's what we always say. Well don't say it. I won't say it. I won't say it now and I won't say it on my dying day. I refuse to see time that way.

I will see it as a walk in the mountains. The path ahead looks long but once it's done I'll look back and, far below, I'll see where I started from. Foreshortened by the distance. But I'll know how far I've come.

Festive Advice

Never go to the cinema on Boxing Day,
unless you want to sit in a dark room and breathe in
turkey farts.

Presents Past

Christmas Day. 

Not this year but many years ago,

I received a princess dress and a special set

of stones which, when put in some kind of solution

turned into little plastic gems.

What happened to them? 

No trace of them remains. 

I see them in the palm of my hand 

as in a dream. 

What other insight have I to give on a day like this? The church seems emptier, true. Who here still believes the words we repeat? Not I. And who really likes turkey? I don't. Who really means thank you? I do, I still do. And the tree is more beautiful than ever. But the gemstones, what of them? I think of them as I amass my small pile of cherished gifts, worth more in money and practicality than plastic rubies. Where did they go? 

Did they dissolve, perhaps, when we stopped leaving out mince pies, and a glass of milk?

Quality Street

It is Christmas Eve,
But all the Purples are gone
So there is no God.

Found Ring

Then I went into my room, looked at my desk
and it was there.

Lost Ring

Suddenly,
the middle finger on my right hand felt
bare.
Something wasn't there.
Something I never usually ceased to wear
and now it wasn't there.
Something small but also precious,
something delicate and rare,
beloved beyond compare,
and now it wasn't there.
It slipped off without my notice
and vanished into thin air.

Rovers Return

When I come home it feels as though nothing has changed.

Except for Coronation Street, but Mum fills me in on all 

the things I missed.

Deli-rium: Soup of the Day

In the lead up to Christmas we stopped serving sandwiches. We needed the counter space for making hampers, and there wasn't much point ordering in stock that would go off.

The lunch-time regulars weren't best pleased. Some took it well and left with a scotch egg instead. Others took it not so well. One gentleman stormed out because we couldn't do him a ham and cheese on granary, slamming the door behind him.

One thing we could offer still was soup. Everyone likes soup! we thought.
Wrong.
No one wants soup. We sold one or two cups a day, at best. And it didn't seem to matter what flavour it was. Tomato and basil sold just as badly as wild mushroom. People only wanted sandwiches, and because there weren't any, they weren't interested in anything else. It didn't matter what soup we put on the board, no one wanted any.

And because it didn't seem to matter what we wrote on the board, we started writing all kinds of things just to see if anyone would notice. Parrot and Coriander, was the first one. No one batted an eyelid. Then we tried something a little wilder. Flea and Spam. Octopus and Cucumber. Butternut Squash and Sadness. Elephant and Castle.

The customers didn't notice.
Which was probably a good thing because Cream of Anthrax would have gotten us shut down.

Let's pretend it was because of that.

You drove me to the station and when I got out I felt this overwhelming sense of something I couldn't quite place. Of nostalgia, perhaps, or some deep and heavy loss. I felt it in the pit of my stomach.

Then when I got on the train I realised I'd left my hair straighteners at your house.

Sudoku

It's one of those things that people do on trains, and for want of anything better to do, I'm now one of those people. I'm stuck, of course. That stage where you can't put a number anywhere. And suddenly I'm flooded with the thought that everyone in the carriage is watching me, out of the corner of their eye or peering over my shoulder, and that they all know where the numbers go but I don't, and that they're judging me, and I still can't deduce where the nine goes but I can't give up, can't lift my eyes from the page because the Evening Standard has suggested I finish in 30 minutes and because if I didn't, everyone would know. But I'm flummoxed, and I'm getting flustered. Maybe I should pretend my pen has run out and be done with it. 

Memory pool

I just found my Piscine De Coubertin membership card. My stomach sunk to the deep end. My eyes stung. Nostalgia, it seems, is chlorinated

An Image

Once I saw a puddle, in which someone had dropped a bottle of milk. The bottle had burst, and the milk spread out into the murky water.

That is what the sky looks like today.

Sitting on trains

Only fools take the train home on the last day of Michaelmas term. At one of the country's oldest and most reputable universities, fools, of course, are in abundance. Myself being one of them, I joined the throngs of students crammed sardine-like into carriages, encumbered with fat suitcases stuffed with dirty laundry for mothers to wash or full of books that won't be read for essays that won't be completed. There is something strange and comical about wealthy boys in blazers sqatting in train corridors, chinos hitched up to reveal wool odd socks above loafers or brogues. I settled down amongst them, wedged between bags, skirt pulled over crossed knees for modesty's sake thinking, oh, could I not have seen this coming? Then i smiled at the parallel that sprang to my mind: an Indian passenger train loaded with people, sitting on carriage roofs, hanging onto windows, clutching onto metal rungs for dear life, making no complaints as the train lumbers on over rickety tracks in the swarthy heat.

Of course, they hadn't paid £75 return for their seats. The students bristled and brayed, bemoaning their hangovers, their longing for mother's cooking, the disgraceful nature of the British railway system, the injustice of it all. I settled down and braced myself for three hours of pins and needles, countng my blessings

The Gallery is the Coldest Place on Earth

The cold crept up into my bones,
or rather, every shiver of heat crept
out of them. Numb fingers numb toes
numb head, mind dulled into simple,
animal logic by the cold, driven to
mad frustration, grumpiness.
Trudged home bitter and almost
wept when I couldn't find my door keys.

And yet, it was nothing
two friends, a duvet and
Nigella Lawson couldn't fix.

The Star of North Road

This star is made not
of burning hydrogen.
Instead it is composed
of Tin foil and a
Jaffa Cake box.
Not through the desert but down
Cobbled streets it guides
Drunken revellers (not weary magi).
Who come not from the far east but from
Some living room,
up some bailey side-street.
The star shines dimly, dances,
(Flops to one side)
And comes to rest. Wise men
Would find this place stranger still than
any animal shed. But the pilgrims
Enter, nonetheless, and pay their £3
Repects in homage to the new-born king.

And yet He is not there.
It is no place for Him.
Only in abstraction, only in name is this a celebration of his birth.
Whilst filthy, too, this place is far removed;
There are animals, of sorts, and singing, but not that of angels. and here the virgins stand in corners, palms sweating.
The star falls to the dancefloor where
It it is trodden in.
And we sin,
And sin,
And sin.
In pseudo-honour
Of Him.

On Handing in an Essay

The pride that comes from your masterful creation,
the relief that comes from its completion,
Alas, akin only to that one feels
having emptied one's bowels.