Remembering Tonight

It wouldn't be midnight already if I haven't had such a good day. Time has warped past me without my knowledge and I feel like I've been cheated out of fully appreciating the moments. At least they are now memories stored away, to be retrieved at my convenience, as long as I have my wits about me. 

Eventually this midnight will pile on top other memories I have made but because its only significance is remembering other good times, I probably won't remember it after a few days. But yet, beautiful she is, this night. And while I will remember none of my ramblings perhaps I will remember gazing into the star-studded night. 

Disappear

The carpet is dark and damp. I watch it drip and soak through the fibers and mingle with the dirt and dust. It begins to pool as the edges of the world begin to cloud around me. I can see nothing but my hand and the darkness on the carpet behind it. It's all mine - my doing - because my mind can't handle it anymore and the problems are closing in on me and my only escape is to relieve the pressure within my veins.

The world seems to get smaller and smaller and all that's left is the stinging in my arm. So I lay down on the dark, damp carpet to keep myself just that little bit warmer as I watch the world shrink around me and finally disappear altogether.

Feeling

In these hands, they say, you can do anything - hold the roughness of labour and stone, work the dirt into earth to bear life, hold the edge of a knife till blood runs down your arm...
...but in these hands you can't feel the bruises which gnaw at heartstrings and numb the mind. These hands can't reach them or feel them swelling and pulsating. And in the whole time we spend trying to look for a bandage which can't even wrap around or stem a flow of black blood onto the floor, we forget that there are other hands to help us through because the darkness is so thick we can only feel that and nothing else.

Vignette #9

It's well after my bedtime and I don't know what time it is anymore

I don't know what time is anymore.

I can feel the rain soaking through my coat and into my shirt underneath. It didn't feel like there was much protecting me from the elements. I can just about make out the headlight of cars coming in my direction before they speed off past me. I know that a small slip on the slippery pavement could mean me falling in front of one of these cars.

These cars are going quite fast.

Talking Tales

It's when it rains, we stay inside, hidden away from sight. All we have are the four walls for our voices to echo and bounce off into each other. At times, we would tell stories around a metaphorical campfire and talk about the untravelled grounds of our lives and how we would one day travel down them. At other times, we would let the stories tell themselves over spilled coffee and crumbs from this morning's stale toasts - these stories are often told in silence without many words if any at all.

Eventually the rain withdraws and we go back out again to enjoy the rare bit of sunlight and part ways, even for awhile, to seek more stories than the ones we tell each other. And when it rains again, we come back indoors and share the stories we gained on our journeys.

And After All That

The door shut as I realise what I am about to leave behind. I turn around only to see it still on the platform where I had left it. The train begins to move and all I can do now is watch it get further and further away and finally disappear as the train turns round a corner.

Was my fault, how it all happened. I still work it out in my head in silence from time-to-time and all I can see is the poison I had introduced into the veins of the partnership. It reverberated throughout with every pump, pulse and by the time I realised what it had done, we'd been infected from head-to-toe. So when I boarded that train with all my belongings in one bag, I found it too difficult to look back knowing that I had caused all of this.

The door was shutting as I realised what I had left behind. I turned around only to see you still standing on the platform where I had left you. The train began to move and all I could do now was watch you get further and further away from me and finally disappear as the train turned round a corner. And after all that, I wish I could say sorry now.

Running Away

I could hear the wind rustling the trees behind the beats of my headphones. Somewhere in the dark, things are still moving, still breathing.

I set off for this run about eight - night had already fallen over London and the winter cold descending on to the people and pavements below. I could have stayed in and waited for sleep to take over me but I couldn't bear the conscious hours before that happened.

You want to make it more painful. More painful.

It is about two degrees out tonight and I can feel the cold tightening its grip around my arms and legs, gnawing particularly at my ankles. This will keep me busy until bedtime and it'll help me to forget about the issues wringing my neck.

Block it all out - the memories of events you don't want to believe have happened.

It's easier to think about the pace of my run. I clocked in forty minutes on the usual five miles last time. I should be able to clock in another forty...or if not less. The headlights of cars coming in the opposite direction blind me at intervals and I find myself constantly having to readjust myself to the darkness.

You know you can't handle it. It's all flitting about in your mind. Flashbacks and glimpses...I can feel the anger and the upset flooding into my mind

I decide to turn down a road I don't normally take. I probably shouldn't be taking an alien route but I hope it'll take me a longer time to complete which will mean less time sitting on my own thinking about...everything. I can see it all, feel it all...

You know it's all there. Feel it.

I can't feel my legs. It's really cold.

It's there. You can't run away from it.

I'm not sure where I'm going now. I think I've taken a wrong turn. I can't get out.

It'll always be there. The pictures, the feelings, the...

It all needs to go the fuck away.

I'm lying on the pavement. My hands and knees grazed from the fall. I'm seeing stars and realise that I've hit my head on the way down. I can't get away from it all - I'm now sitting on the pavement, in the dark, on my own, thinking of everything I've been trying to run away from. I lean against the fence behind me and wait for the pain to pass. Cars rattle by in the mean time and I watch them disappear around the bend of the road; just makes me wish moving on was as easy as changing direction. I finally get up and make my way home, tired and tearful.