i.
I think meetings are like satsumas;
the skin
can peel
off in
tiny pieces,
your fingers will get covered in the juice
and you can spend hours picking off the white stringy bits
and then the fruit will taste sweet and it will be all worth it.
Or it peels off in one easy motion and it’s all full of pips or it’s dry or it’s bitter and that’s like meetings.
Meetings are strange because they can go on forever or they can be over in a minute.
Some people you meet everyday.
Others you meet once and never see them again.
My parents had the second type of meeting.
They met at a bus stop and my mother complained about the weather and my father agreed it was too hot and then he gave her his number and then she called him.
He became her window cleaner.
He moved in.
They lived in the same house.
They never saw each other.
Everything was terrible.
They never met again.
They drew up different lists:
Frankie, Rae, Teagan.
Genevieve, Emily, Jessica.
Somehow it became something else that neither particularly liked and the outside world didn’t much like it either. They locked the doors and I watched from the window.
Why don’t you go out? Don’t go out.
Everything was terrible.
Mother saw it on the TV.
Father saw it through other people’s windows.
But I can seem never break the peel.
It doesn’t come off in one easy motion
and it doesn’t come off in pieces.
It doesn’t come off at all.
But I am the girl from the cobweb;
I am the spider who stopped catching flies.
From the smell of gravy and soapy water to the kebabs and urban fox.
Meetings. Where do I begin?
ii.
Adrian Wren was wondering how many leg bones
it would take to build a wall around his house,
or rather round his old house.
The bones would have to go around the neighbour’s houses too
so he supposed it would take quite a lot of bones to go round all the houses.
He was writing an article about a murderer who kept the leg bones of his victims.
This was not a crucial element.
It was supposed to be about the murderer’s childhood,
in which the murderer was the victim.
The childhood did not answer the question: why leg bones of the victims?
The bones were building up in his head.
How would you glue bones together?
Adrian began typing;
the isolation and loneliness of being a middle child, the least favourite son.
The problem with being the victim.
It was actually kind of funny, when he thought about it.
Why a leg bone? Why not something smaller, that could be hidden?
Adrian wondered if the girl in the red boots thought about things like that. The girl who had knocked on the door of the too small flat to use his shower and borrow a cup.
Her shower,
she said,
kind
of
just
dripped.
iii.
Sometimes, I tell lies. Or not quite lies. Half truths. For example:
• These shoes belonged to a dead woman.
• Sea cucumbers can use their internal organs as a defence mechanism.
• My cousin nearly died whilst attempting to eat a match.
I just want to tell something to someone but I don’t always have the real story, so I tell a not quite story. Or ask a not quite question. For example:
• What would life be like if humans had shells?
• Do we have shells?
• What do people living on mountains do with their faeces?
Right now, I’m looking at the flecks on the carpet, trying to find faces. Once, there was a house built above a graveyard and faces appeared on the floor. I wish there were faces on this floor. I wish I lived above a graveyard.
I live on the ground floor, above the bins. It’s interesting to watch what people have to put in the bins.
If only you’d concentrate on something important as much as you concentrate on that window.
But here’s the man from four floors away, putting his ******* in the bin. His clothes frown, his hair frowns, his whole being frowns. Frowns are like creases ironed into clothes, but who is the iron, what are the clothes?
*iv.
Adrian Wren was still trying to solve the riddle.
Most people thought they gave cryptic clues
about themselves but they were actually
just the conventional ones reworded.
This was a real riddle.
It was about her and it wasn’t about her.
It began with a J and ended with an I.
Anything could fit in between.
Jaci? Jessi?
She had a habit of appearing,
maybe at the bottom of the stairs.
Adrian was somehow angry at her,
just for being there,
sitting on the stairs,
picking a spider out of her hair,
walking out then coming back in as
if to test she really knew the code.
He was trying to write up an argument about people
on benefits but the space bar
keptgettingstuckandthewordsgotclumpedtogetherintonewwordsthatnoonehadanysuggestionsfor.
Jenni? Jodi? Juli?
Sometimes, he was certain she was trying to steal something.
Other times, she was one of those strange specimens
who attached themselves to another, because of an accidental look.
Mostly, she was just the girl in the boots without a name.
Jerri? Josi? Jani?*
Adrian found that the riddle hung
on
the edge
of the mind,
an itch which wasn’t really too itchy.
There were other things to worry about:
• Work
• Old things reopening
• Work
• Ignoring the phone
• Work
• A knocking at the door.
• Do you mind, if I come in – it’s just there’s this programme on telly and-
v.
Just tell me your name. He didn’t want to play this game.
Only, it was addictive, now he’d got started.
Now, it was a matter of having to know.
I gave you all the clues I’m giving, she grinned.
Joni,
Adrian said finally,
looking back at the screen
of his laptop.
vi.
Joni-Rae.
It was hyphenated because they couldn’t decide,
because they never really met.
Sometimes, people will call me Joan if they hate nicknames and Johnny if they can’t pronounce it.
Joni-Rae, but actually only ever Joni.
Begins with a J and ends in an I.
Does that still count, if I amputated part of it?
His middle name was nearly Ray too.
Adrian Ray Wren. Too many Rs.
I’m still looking for my middle name though. Does it mean I’m missing a bit of my meaning? Is there a bit of me I haven’t met just yet? Can we meet ourselves or only other people?
Thanks if you made it to the end. This was part of a writing exercise to change the form of a piece. I changed a piece of prose into a kind of poetry prosey thing.
