out here's too cold and i don't want to walk it alone

when i was lost, you thought me a beautiful find.
sometimes i think of you sleeping, so sleep for awhile.


from Beggar's Prayer by Emiliana Torrini

she was still as still.

This was because she knew few words and believed in none, and in the world she was rather silent, contributing just her share of urbane humor with a precision that approached meagerness. But at the moment when strangers tended to grow uncomfortable in the presence of this economy she would seize the topic and rush off with it, feverishly surprised with herself - then bring it back and relinquish it abruptly, almost timidly, like an obedient retriever, having been adequate and something more.


from Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

monday

Abandoned Dome


I leaked.
And my ceilings went on forever. You could lose your head and kite. You could fall in love with distance and grow lonely at the same time.
I could never be divided. I wanted you wholly. I wanted to lick your open spaces, your paranoia, and the damp salt behind each knee.
Come, let me charm you in my whisper gallery where I can hear you breathe from the other side of the moon and when you moan, each window moans too. My sounds once delighted - triangle, pentagon, icosahedron, ding-dong, I miss you.
The front door, so difficult to open, meant please and stay, love insulating our private balloon.


from Fields, Ribbons, Folds: Somatic Landscapes for Zaha Hadid by Hadara bar-Nada

bones

What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together. They are strewn there pell-mell. One of your ribs leans against my skull. A metacarpal of my left hand lies inside your pelvis. (Against my broken ribs your breast like a flower.) The hundred bones of our feet are scattered like gravel. It is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet it does. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.

from And our faces, my heart, brief as photos by John Berger

moths and rain

i still love weather like this. somehow the rain makes me feel warm inside. i love to hear the sound of it falling on leaves as i walk home. there is a moth fluttering around my lampshade and i wonder if it's escaping.

my sewing homework

sometimes i'm not very good... so here are some little things that need mending. with any luck this will at least stop me sleeping in til the afternoon as often as i would like to.

i'd love to wake up by 8.30am at the very latest. no matter what day of the week it is. except for very occasional Sunday sleep-ins. if i'm sitting in front of my university work, i'll get started. and begin limiting my coffee drinking, from several, to five cups a day. with less sugar. one teaspoon in one cup per day. i will make an effort to stop eating like a boy... then i can have one sweet treat a day.

that's my sewing. all mended and neatly folded x

goodbye

goodbye winter. i will miss your rain on my tongue. your biting wind in my face. and the way the slightest glance of the sun makes me smile. i will miss the bare trees and my cold hands tucked inside his warm woollen pockets.

i will miss you. but... i want this.

i want the dry cracked earth. i want burning feet as i run down to the water. i want to feel the sun tickling my skin. sunhats. and sticky fingers from my dripping iceblock. and to be so thirsty that i can't think of anything else.

kisses

you kiss me a hundred times a day.

sleeping too deep

sometimes i sleep when i should not. i hear your voice in my head. but still i wake to find you are not there.

waiting

I will tell her...she sighs and stirs, sweeps her unbrushed hair clear of her watery eyes, goes to rise but remains sitting, cups her hands around a jug - a junk shop present to herself. In her eyes the window makes small bright squares, under her eyes cusps of blue twin-moon her white face. She pushes her hair clear, sighs and stirs.

from In between the sheets by Ian McEwan

hold tight, it's just beginning.

she struggled and drew in a shallow breath.
"i am afraid," she said.
"of what?" he asked.
she let her breath go.
and underneath it softly murmured, "of failure."