This just isn't fair.
Not right.
I would rather have stayed alone, untouched, locked away,
than this.
Last night I thought a change had come.
I finally felt the heavens open and a beam of light settle on my face, as warming as the sun,
as warming as your hands on me.
But now it's cold.
My body that had gotten into a routine of no emotion, no feeling,
felt alive.
Electricity ran down my veins into my fingertips, my stomach filled with stars and
my lips
burnt.
I've been left scorched.
A burns victim with acid thrown in their face.
I've been scooped out like a pumpkin and left hollow.
I've been resuscitated and the plug pulled again.
Whatever sadness I felt before was
nothing
like this.

I was happy being unhappy.

I wish I could have stayed with you,
and felt how it is to be touched again.

Last night is blurry in my sleep fogged mind,
through my smudgy black eyes.
But I can feel the ghost
of the awkward,
stumbling,
kisses we shared,
the faint tickle of your hot breath
that whispered down my neck.

Did it really happen?

Dad.
I will always remember when I was thirteen and you came into the living room and said
"We have nothing in common anymore. Nothing to talk about."
That broke me.
At the time I didn't understand what you meant. But now I've grown,
and the years have gone by,
and I think it's finally clear what you meant that day you made me cry myself to sleep.

I have always been a Daddy's girl.
My first word was "Da Da."
You taught me how to walk, ***** trained me, took me to the doctors when I was ill.
I used to lie on your belly and watch football with you, even though I had no interest in sports
and would rather curl up with a book instead.
But I tried.
Because thinking even your gender is a disappointment to your own father is a pain so sharp, so unfair that I was willing to try anything.
I remember when you bought me a jumper, bag, trainers, t-shirt with your, our, favourite team on them.
I proudly wore them to school, only to be pounced on by the older boys.
"Haha, they're *****."
They kicked my bag and stomped on my trainers.
But I didn't care.
It wasn't only football.
I remember us sitting on the sofa watching Laurel and Hardy videos, stuffing ourselves with pizza,
you beaming down at me as I laughed and laughed at the silly man and his angry friend.
That made you happy.
There were lots of things that made you unhappy.
If I spilled a glass of milk, or drew on my hands, or forgot to wear my coat to school,
you'd transform into the 'other' Dad.
A man I didn't know,
still don't know,
spitting and screaming at me, your wild eyes vacant of the real you.
The shifts made you tired, and I crept around when you were in bed,
and even when you were awake, afraid to bring out your Mr Hyde.
Being ill didn't help. You clung even more desperately to life,
Mr Hyde coming out when anything went wrong.
It wasn't your fault,
but try telling that to the ten year old me.
All I knew was my Daddy might die.
I was scared.
You were scared.

I'm still scared now, at nineteen years of age.
I finally understand what you said that day.
We are like a ghost of our former selves.
When we sit on our separate sofas, I can hear the faint laughter of our times watching Laurel and Hardy.
When we greet each other on a morning, a grunt from me, a grunt from you, I remember our embraces.
Now it hurts to touch.

How can I love somebody so much who scares me so much.

Sometimes,
usually when I've had a drink,
(or two),
I try to remember what it feels like to be kissed,
the hot, wet, desperate pressing of lips.
This is what it must be like for somebody with Alzheimer's disease.
Pretty much impossible.
I creak open my own crumbling, forgotten lips, lined with cobwebs, filled with bats.
I think of Miss Havisham.
"Can I get another?"

It's the night times that are the hardest.
The image of that cute couple in the coffee shop from earlier flickers through my mind.
I look up at the TV for a distraction, only to see a tender embrace, loves first kiss.
I search for the remote on the side of my bed where a body should be,
brush a hand across the cold fabric.
I put on some music.
"And all I could do was cry"
Crying, Etta, is futile.
Each tear hammers down on my hollow emptiness like a drum,
a-lone, a-lone, a-lone.
Alone.
The alarm clock on my bedside table ticks and ticks,
waiting
and waiting,
ticking
and waiting.
What are you waiting for?

Time to go to sleep.

In adverts for chocolate and sweet companies,
the thin pretty girl seductively
consumes
a bar of chocolate,
or the hunky male model
gets the girl
with a Mars Bar in his perfectly carved hand.

What you don't see,
is the tear stained faces of the chubby guys and girls,
the ones with an endless cavern of hunger that no amount of
consumption
can ever fill,
the painfully skinny guys and girls, skinnier even than the
pretty faces in the adverts,
desperately turning their mouths into an abyss of thick
sickly brown,
before forcing it out of them again, like a perverse sort of
waterfall.
The endless sadness,
and need,
and starvation,
and greed,
that leaves them even more hollow and engorged with shame and pain,
than whatever they seem on the outside.

The adverts are just a candy wrapper.