Thanks, River

The river burst its banks. A great serpent grown glossy and fat from the rains which fed it. It rose up in vast waves and currents, eddies tearing down trees and carrying them with it with a force we did not know it had.  The arches of bridges shrank into semi-circles. The water drank the banks and pathways, devoured bicycles and cars. And it seeped into the basements of the faculty, lapping at chairs where students once sat. It slithered into the boiler room and settled down.

The heating broke. We shivered in the upper rooms whilst the water receded. They closed the building down and we rejoiced like schoolboys sent home early due to snow. The collective dream we've shared since infancy.
No
More
School.

In the morning we slept in with smiles on our faces, saying prayers of thanks to the river gods.

Arrival

It is a journey I have made many times. By day. By night.
Now I make it again, only this time, as I rise from the bowels of the city, I feel my stomach rise with it,
and my heart rises, into my mouth. I rise from the city step by step, upwards into the amber light, leaving the city behind, a kaleidoscope of glitter and darkness. Cold wet leaves on cold wet stone. Step by step. Shoes scuff and slip. Breath burns out in cold clouds. Heart beats. Muscles sear. Numb toes stub hard on errant cobbles, though I know these streets. The climb is hard, though this too I know well. The night is young; yet the darkness is full-grown. I rise through it. Step by step. And as though emerging through mountain cloud I emerge on the platform and am bathed in golden light, breath heavy, triumphant.

I wait for you.

Selective Memory

Once you said something to me and it moved me to tears. We were walking home through the dark. I remember the exact street we were standing on, the direction I was facing in, the exact spot I stopped in when your words sunk in. I remember the way you looked at me, the way your face changed as my eyes began to redden and sting. I even remember the clothes we were wearing. I remember how long your facial hair was. And  I remember the feeling, the crushing weight of  beauty so immense, so difficult to bear. The way it filled my chest and choked me up. The way you took me in your arms and made it well up and over and melt away.

But I cannot, cannot for the life of me remember what it was that you actually said.

Writing Assignment 7

The train is full of strangers, as trains almost always are. It is stationary. The doors agape as still more strangers traipse aboard, alone or in groups. Cold air breathes in, and with it seeps the silence that is so often found in such places. Strangers sat together in an enclosed space. It is night. The lights are bright but yield little warmth.

The doors croon their closing song, a forlorn sound from which all urgency is lost into the night. The last passenger steps onto the train. The doors close.

She is drunk.

As the train moves she staggers and collapses into an empty carpet-coloured seat, falling into place amongst silent strangers.

She breaks the silence.

She begins to slur strange words in a strange language. A Latin language, but it doesn't matter which. The importance lies only in the fact that no one understands it, and no one understands her. The strangers shift uncomfortably. She begins to shout. Her features wild and angry, expressions marred by the viscous slowness of alcohol in the blood. Her hair wild and dark, her clothes, too, a swathe of darkness about wild limbs. Her eyes teary. Glaring. Wild. All the while shouting, muttering, uttering.

The strangers eyes seek something else, anything else but her; invariably they find the floor, occasionally other eyes, the eyes of other strangers, and something is communicated, some fleeting yet pervasive sense of discomfort. She stands, staggers, shouts louder, directing her strange words at no one in particular yet everyone all at once. Gesturing. The scent of alcohol on her breath is palpable, though no one can smell it. She stands and sways, shouts and spits and sits down again. Eyes look elsewhere.

The train roars through black-dark tunnels. The strangers sway. Shoulders bump. Hands that briefly brushed are snatched back apologetically.


She turns and speaks her tongues to someone else. To everyone else. To no one else. Guttural sounds that made no sense. Or rather, no verbal sense. Sense is made on another level, a primal level, more gut-felt, more profound. I am angry. I am angry and frightened. I am frightened and confused. I am hurting and I want to hurt. I want to hurt and I want to hurt myself. I want hurt myself as I am angry. I am angry. I hate you all. I hate you all and I hate myself. I am angry.


The train lights splutter.

From her pocket she draws a packet of cigarettes. All eyes lift from the floor to follow, with disbelief, the shaky trajectory of her hand from box to lip. Then she pulls out a box of matches.

The train swerves again, more violently. The box falls to the floor and the eyes follow it, see the explosive scatter of match sticks about their feet.

Silence.

Despair, despair, helplessness, uselessness, shame, hate, hate, despair.

The train stops and the woman, screaming a dying tirade at everyone and no one, flees the carriage like a wild, dark bird. Cawing, jabbering, into the night. Leaving the strangers to their silence, which seeps back down from the ceiling and settles into her empty, match-strewn seat.

Tree Song

On nights like this when I cannot sleep, when the rain's lullaby does not suffice to comfort me, I rise from my bed and throw the window open to let in the night. The rain lets itself in after, and I stare up at the tree behind our house, bare of all foliage, all colour; it's wet bark inky black as though blown across a page with a plastic straw. My eyes move as though to count the branches, but they appear infinite, uneven fractals spiralling wildly into a low sky, cast bronze by the street lights. In the storm, its voice is the mightiest of whispers. The most profound of lullabies. I gaze up at its boughs until my skin grows numb. Then slink back into sleep.

Nib

I can't write about you any more.

You're too deep under my skin
to scratch out with the nib of a pen.

Wish Bone

We tear you from the
still-warm carcass of some
poor, once-feathered thing.
Frail little bone, piece of ribcage.
You are everything.

You are that from which
we are made, from which
all things are made.
(Though Eve betrayed us, we are loathe
to blame the part you played.)

And we will break you.
Because we break all
things that can be broken.
Bones and vows, seals and silence.

But our wishes go unspoken.