Outside with tea and blankets:
a Fortress against the

August cold.

And so begins another typically English evening.

night is marching,
marching on and

unusually

we are not glued to our phones
nor the daily grind.

we catch a handful of

Shooting Stars

and find that this is an addictive occupation.

One moment I wished I could drape my room with starry waterfalls
but then considered how they would

dull
      
       and
            
            darken

if I breathed too deeply in my sleep.

(a subconscious effort to absorb some starlight into my clotting veins.)

So leave me now under the
Flaming Sky and all its anger.

Leave me alone so that I may fall asleep,
at last.

I have an appointment with the moon about my dulling temperament.

The stars have sworn to let down a

r
o
p
e

l
a
d
d
e
r

my own Stairway to Heaven.

So rip my heart out,
let my arteries unwind.

Haul me to heaven with my umbilical cord.

There I cling to the back of a comet
and hurtle through space
alive at last and full of stars
until the nausea takes hold

and puts me to bed.

Despite my proficiency at chopping carrots with pinpoint precision,
I can’t pinpoint the moment when food stopped just being there and started being

THERE.

(Who remembers what it was like to hold a knife without a load of ****** connotations?)

I don’t know

why or
what or
when or

how

but

suddenly food became scary and strange, and so much more than hot chocolate to melt the snowflakes from eyelashes or ice cream when eyelashes are melting, and suddenly the snowflakes started growing inside, icy icy cold in a way that the hot chocolate (with whipped cream à la polite refusal) could never have melted.

I don’t know many things.

I know a lot less than I claim to know but I know that food is life and I would say

Life is A Good Thing.

I know that people say you are what you eat. I never knew what it meant.

Never knew what it meant, that is, until I thought about you and all the things you could be.

You could be what you eat.

o Who cares if you cry when your tears are lemonade?

o I don’t mind if you style your hair in fusilli ringlets or tagliatelle straight. Both are equally delicious.

o Without trying to peanut butter-you-up, you’re exactly my cup of tea.

o I know that the only time to cry over spilled milk is when you were about to dip your biscuits in it.

o Life’s not always a piece of cake…which is why I urge you to have your cake and eat it too, whenever possible.

o You know what else I know? You’re iced to perfection with a cherry on top.

o If you’d rather, you could always be a sweetie pie.

o And let me spill the beans: the only way to tie up your shoes is with strawberry laces.

o I’d even love you for your artichoke heart, as long as it’s still beating.

o You’re the apple of my eye nonetheless.

o Everyone knows the best way to maintain good dental hygiene is to candy-floss your tic-tac teeth.

o And you can show them off when you grin and your mouth becomes a banana split on strawberry lips.


So tell me this:

Why have stars when you could have champagne shooters in your eyes?


Look, I may not know many things,

But something I’m sure of:

In order to be a truly tough cookie, you have to eat a lot of them first.

When I think of you,
And I think of me,
I think of the tides.
Because whenever we drift apart,
We will always meet again.

You are the ebb and I am the flow.

We may be flung oceans apart
by cracks in the head and rips
in the heart
that ruptured

And flooded with grief –
a lava-storm that pierced our lungs
(and our tears may pour out just as easily)

but remember:

The moon governs the tides.

They are her children:
She hugs them close
and spins them in silver-silk (fairy dust?)
so they are never far away, not really.
They will always meet again.

So when I miss you,
When you think the rain is too much to withstand,
When you believe the sky is too heavy for the ocean to hold,
When you feel your lungs are pierced and the sea is rising in your throat,

Close your eyes and hear the stars’ lullaby:
The moon is calling you.

Remember:

You are the ebb and I am the flow

and we will always meet again.

She lay there:
So peaceful and tranquil it seemed
nothing would ever trouble her.
Her parents gazed fondly at their
perfect little girl
As the tears escaped their eyes,
Falling endlessly.

By her fifth birthday,
She had said her first word,
Developed a taste for chocolate,
Seen some of the big, wide world,
And recognised the thrill of laughing
uncontrollably.

At seven,
She made a new friend,
Fell out with another,
Read some new books,
And was always fascinated by her
geography lessons.

When she turned eleven,
She joined a dance class,
Went to France with school,
Baked some cupcakes,
And begged her mum to let her try on her
high heels.

Thirteen years of her life gone,
And she had her first kiss,
Argued with her parents,
Handed in a homework late,
And wished she was prettier, taller, thinner,
cleverer.

She was sixteen
When she had seen too much of the big, wide world,
And knew reality in all its cruel coldness.
She wore lots of makeup
And a fake smile to mask her
feelings.

It worked.

Until
She whispered,

“Take me to Wonderland.”

And shot herself in the head.

She lay there:
So peaceful and tranquil it seemed
nothing would ever trouble her.
Her parents gazed fondly at their
perfect little girl
As the tears escaped their eyes,
Falling endlessly.

For if you stared into his eyes,
You felt you would
Fall.

Fall into the rolling oceans of pain he carried within
As he was tossed by waves of an alone that words could not describe.

For if you used the vividest colours imaginable,
Your portrait would never be
Real.

Real like the cracks that spread across his fractured heart
As the darkness seeped into every corner of his crumbling body.

For if you filled him with medication and false promises,
He might dare to
Hope.

Until he realised Hope was as fake as the rest of them
As his thoughts twisted him cruelly and he became unrecognisable.

For if you had stopped to listen,
You might have heard him
Scream.

Scream with a silence so loud it tore his very being apart
As his heart sighed and his soul drifted at last into an eternal calm where agony could not exist.