Bonjour, mon amour.
What brings you here
at such a late hour?
Ah, I see. Your heart
has been broken. Many
have before yours and many
will after. Well, comment ça va?
Not too good? It would be
a miracle if you did feel
well.

Have some gin and some
sellotape. Patch up that heart.
Have a fresh start. Give me
a smile that can stretch a
mile.

Look to the stars, mon amour,
and see them shining.
Half of them are already
dead and gone but their light
makes such an impression, we
see them for years after.

Look at the ground, mon amour,
and watch the ants at work.
They never falter even when there
are obstacles in their way.
They just get on by.

So, mon amour,
Have some gin and some
sellotape. Patch up that heart.
Have a fresh start. Give me a
smile that can stretch a
mile.

Look at me, mon amour,
See these eyes that shine so bright?
Do you think they shine with laughter
or tears?
See these lines, across my face?
Are they the crinkles of worry or smile?

Look in the mirror, mon amour,
and tell me what it reflects.
You say you see yourself?
Look closer.
Now what do you see?
I thought so.

My, oh my, mon amour,
Have some gin and some
sellotape. Patch up that heart.
Have a fresh start. Give me a
smile that can stretch a
mile.

Au revoir, mon amour.
Leaving so soon?
I hope you think it through.
Remember what I have said
and spread the word.
Do not have a heavy
heart. Bonne nuit and sleep well.
Life doesn't last forever
so enjoy it whilst you can.

It all began when someone left the window open.
The love bird cocked its bright green head at the shut door of Woodren’s third floor bedroom, perched on her bedpost. Its bright black eyes glittered, listening for the sounds of Woodren’s footsteps. None came. It ruffled its feathers impatiently; waiting for Woodren to come back with some water for its thirsty beak.
The love bird’s first memory was of Woodren: her clear gray eyes expressing her great happiness through them and not through the tiny curve of a smile on her thin pale lips. Her small white fingers pressed on the syringe gently, and a hot, mushy substance that tasted of apples and bananas went down its throat. The tiny black beak clattered against the plastic syringe greedily. “Aw, you poor baby. You’re hungry aren’t you, my Hoopsie-girl?” she murmured.
She then later taught her baby lovebird to fly with the patience of a mother. As soon as its wings started flapping feebly, she lifted Hoopsie up on the palm of her hand above her head and drew her hand away quickly, teaching the lovebird to fly and landing on Woodren’s soft bed. On cold nights, Woodren would wrap her favorite emerald green scarf around Hoopsie and place her behind the television where it was always warm and sellotape the electric sockets and wires so that Hoopsie was safe.
Woodren never even considered snipping the feathers of Hoopsie’s wings; she would never hurt her darling creature, and snip of its greatest glory. She would comb the feathers with a miniature pink Barbie brush, noticing how blue feathers had started to appear on Hoopsie’s wings and red ones slowly layered beneath the blue as time went by.
Showering Hoopsie was the hardest of all. Aunt and Uncle Palmer had no idea that Hoopsie even existed and revealing her presence would leave both Hoopsie and Woodren with no home. Late at night, Woodren would have to sneak out to the bathroom on the first floor (not on the second floor because that one was right next to Aunt and Uncle Palmer’s bedroom), down the stairs (taking care to step over the thirteenth stair that groaned so loudly), turn on the taps quietly and wash a sleepy Hoopsie with warm water.
Her two youngest cousins often made fun of her for the funny smell that stuck on her clothes sometimes. Linda and Lucy, her bratty twin cousins, asked in their scornful sing-song voices, “Why do you lock your room Woodren? Scared we’ll find all your old ***** clothes under the bed that you wouldn’t let Ma throw away?”
“No, maybe she’s scared we’ll find naughty magazines? If we do, we’ll tell Pa and you’ll have nowhere to stay ‘cause Pa says that type of behavior is sinful and he won’t tolerate it in his house!”
Woodren found it in her heart to look upon her silly cousins as childish entertainment. What did they know of the love she had for Hoopsie? “No, I’m scared you’ll find the monster under my bed and start crying for your Ma”
Linda narrowed her blue eyes, “I’m telling Ma you mentioned Lucy’s fear of the monster under the bed to her face! Besides, you don’t have anywhere else to go. You live on Pa’s charity. Ma said so.”
It was the lowest of insults based on a harsh truth. Woodren’s mother had died of cancer when Woodren was very young and her father followed her mother not a year after with heart grief. Her mother had asked her younger sister to take in Woodren; they were her only relatives and had stopped being fond of her once their own two twin daughters arrived and Mr. Palmer started to have to work harder to feed the six bellies at his dinner table. She just became another mouth to feed.
The only person Woodren got along well with in the household was her eldest cousin, Max. Max rarely spoke in anything but grunts, thought of his two little sisters as annoying brats, refused to say more than two sentences at a time to his simpering mother and loudly obnoxious father and often came and sat in Woodren’s room with his large feet against the wall, stroking Hoopsie’s head in silence. She really was fond of Max sometimes. He could be so thoughtful. Just two weeks before, for her birthday, Max had bought her maroon silk curtains with white birds imprinted upon them. He had even gone further than that and stitched in white thread, “Happy birthday. I love you” a red wonky heart followed and then “From Hoopsie.” Simply imagining him sitting there with a huge, thick curtain holding a tiny needle in his bear-like paws, cursing as he stabbed his rough fingertips and fumbling clumsily made her shout with laughter.
It was Max’s idea to buy Hoopsie a big metal cage and attach it to a branch on the big tree in their garden with a piece of shoelace, hidden among all the green leaves. That way, when Hoopsie sang Woodren wouldn’t have to blast her music and radio at the same time or pinch Hoopsie’s beaks shut when her Aunt or Uncle come to  yell at her if she was deaf or crazy or both. And that way, Woodren’s room wouldn’t have its twangy smell of bird **** and Woodren wouldn’t have to be paranoid all day long at school, wondering if nosy Aunt Palmer had broken into her room and found Hoopsie. And that way, she could leave her window open during the day, trying to rid her room off the nutty, sugary smell.
Max’s room was on the same floor as Woodren, the third floor. Every morning, bright and early before school, Woodren would run with a small lump in her sweater and the keys to her locked room jingling on her wrists to Max’s room. Max would barely acknowledge her as she ran across his room, opened his window and climbed out like a monkey to the branch that pushed against his window sill. She crawled along it with speed and sat there, with her legs hanging down and the branch between her legs, fumbled for the cage door above her head, made sure there was enough water and food to last Hoopsie for the day, popped Hoopsie inside with a quick kiss, arranged the fan-like fresh morning-smell leaves to cover the cage completely and skate back towards Max’s window.
Hoopsie mourned with a few high whistling notes. She hated being away from Woodren during the day- waiting for the moment when the sun was getting hot, and Hoopsie was tired of chatting to the birds in the nearby trees, when Woodren’s sharp little white face with its explosion of frizzy black hair would appear in between the leaves with her happy grey eyes and let her fly around the tree before calling, “Hoopsie” followed by her signature tilting whistle. But for now, and for every morning till noon, Hoopsie would have to wait.
“You don’t think they’ll find her do you?” Woodren would ask Max as she clambered back into his window. It was their daily morning ritual.
“No. Pa told Ma that it’s all about privacy now that I’m a growing-up boy. I’ll lock my door; promise.” He would reply back, completing their ritual.
“Are you still eating lunch with that Ed kid?” he asked, completely breaking their ritual this morning.
“Yes.” She was completely surprised. Not only was Max breaking a routine, Max of all people, he was doing so by asking her a question about her personal life.
Woodren eyed Max strangely. To her, Max was her huge cousin that somehow managed to communicate with a variety of different grunts and hated cutting his hair because of his fear of sharp objects; but to the rest of the school and neighborhood, she knew Max was the “strong and silent” handsome tall boy, every girl’s dream, with his shaggy blonde hair.
“Why?” her gray eyes grew rounder when suspicious instead of narrowing.  
“You don’t have many friends at school.”
“You know I don’t get along with any of them but Ed. I don’t like being friends with people unless I actually like them… unlike all the other girls at school.”
“I don’t like you staying around the Ed kid too much.”
Woodren felt a little glow of affection for Max in her heart. She understood why Max was worried. Ed was unstable with the rest of the world. He did what he wanted to, he said exactly what he wanted to and he wasn’t afraid of anything because he didn’t care what anyone said. He was the kid that the no parents wanted their children to stay near. There wasn’t anything Ed hadn’t done before.
Despite what everyone else thought, Woodren knew that his morals and sense of good and justice were strong in his heart. And when it came to Woodren he was always there for her since he moved to the neighborhood more than half a year ago. No matter how many offending remarks he made, she felt he had become the only stable thing in her life in spite of him being so apt to change. She had learned to depend on him.  
At the breakfast table, Woodren’s gray eyes slid over from Linda to Lucy to Aunt Palmer to Uncle Palmer and rested on Max the longest. Until she had come to look at Max, all four of them were identical in their attractive features and identical in their pinched-up, suspicious and petty expressions glazed over with a courteous mask. Max’s blue eyes, though the same shape as Aunt Palmer’s and the same color as Uncle Palmer’s, expressed a good heart and sincerity.
Her first subject of the day was an art lesson. All she had to do was sit comfortably, a palette with swirls of colors, paintbrushes, charcoals and pencils, a *** of water, and a fresh-smelling page. Usually she drew herself as a monster, or Linda as the devil- disturbing pictures that made people believe she was “talented”. But today, it came to her all of a sudden she’d never done a good, worthwhile painting of Hoopsie. Sure, her tables and notebooks were filled with carvings she’d doodled in class but never something she would want to keep.
She started to sketch Hoopsie on her bed post, eyeing the nuts Woodren had stolen from Aunt Palmer’s snack cupboard. She drew Hoopsie in the big tree and painted a metal cage around her. Somehow, the silver cage ruined the picture completely, making Woodren grimace. When the paint dried, she erased Hoopsie from inside the cage and drew her beside it, her small black feet gripping a twig.
Woodren remembered how elegant birds looked when she looked up into the sky, and saw them with their wings spread out and imagined feeling the wind rush through her feathers and ripple down her head and spine, with a heaven of azure blue surrounding her, shooting through clouds cold and refreshing like a sprinkler in the garden. Maybe that’s what freedom tasted like. She tried drawing Hoopsie soaring in the sky before she realized she’d never seen Hoopsie soar like other birds do, because Hoopsie had never done so.
Broodingly, she packed up when class was dismissed, slowly and thoughtfully. Somehow, that small beginning of a painting had darkened her frame of mind completely. Still ruminating, she headed down the hall way to eat lunch.
“Woody!” Hearing the sound of that voice, she momentarily forget her unease and Woodren’s thin, pale lips spread in a smile even before she turned around to him. Ed was the only one who ever called her that. His oval head was covered in small black bristles and one of his black eyebrows rose as he smirked with his pink lips curving down. The diamond earring in his ear glinted like his teeth did. He caught her eyes with his hazel ones; his eyes were warm and lively.  His mouth formed words that were witty and charming and could always make Woodren laugh.
Woodren put a look of amazement on her face. “You came to school today.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve been coming to school nearly all month.”
“That’s why I’m surprised.”
He hit her arm lightly. A few girls nearby turned around and giggled when they caught Ed’s eyes. Woodren remembered when Ed had first come to school. All the prettiest girls at school kept sidling over to him and batting their eyelashes. Ed had taken one look at the curves on their bodies; his eyes flickered over their face, a little bored, and continued his conversation with Woodren as if there had been no interruption.
It was a mark of their friendship three weeks later when she told him about her family. His hazel eyes had burnt hotly. When he was angry, his voice was quieter, but strained as if the passionate anger behind the words were being controlled with the greatest effort, “People who ruin other people’s happiness on purpose and with joy are just plain evil.” He told her that he hated the monsters that kidnapped children, crippled them, not only in body but mind too, and forced them to beg, far away from those that loved them. Here followed a stream of facts, all said in the same tone that both scared and impressed Woodren.
“How do you know so much about it?” she had once asked him.
He looked at her with an odd gleam in his eyes, “Because I care.”
Now he was looking at her without breaking his gaze, the same odd gleam in his eyes, searching her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She had still been brooding over Hoopsie in a cage, and why the picture upset her so much.
“Woody, tell me what’s wrong.”
Every time Woodren mentioned Hoopsie, Ed would go silent or make an offending remark about the way that Woodren took care of Hoopsie. Over a very short time, Woodren had learned never to mention Hoopsie’s name and though it drove her crazy with frustration, she knew Ed would never tell her reason the why if she tried to pry it out of him. Knowing not to answer truthfully, “I told you, nothing”
“I can tell when you’re lying. Your eyes grow whopping and your mouth pouts to the right.”
“Shut up.”
He looked at her searchingly before giving up with an irritated sigh.
“Come with me.” The chair scraped as he pulled out and pushed the table away from him. His tall frame dwarfed her.
He brought her to the back of the school where teachers and students never went, leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. “You want to try one?”
“I don’t smoke, Ed”
“Why won’t you even try it?” The tone he used when he was about to state something that began an argument leaked into his voice smoothly, like oil. Woodren opened her mouth to list the damaging things it did to your lungs and heart but his voice had begun in its rapid, silky tone:
“Because society has brain washed you so that if you smoke when you’re a child, you’re a horrible ungrateful creature that will never go far in life. But when an adult smokes, it’s okay. You don’t smoke because people and teachers tell you not to try it. Well I say, **** them. These are the best years of your life. Do what you want, try everything so you can make the choices of your life later with a rounded experience and knowledge. I’m not saying get addicted. You have to be strong if you’re gonna be a risk-taker…” he inhaled deeply and exhaled in a husky voice, “I just thought you always went on about how you were such a strong risk taker.” He blew a cloud of heavy smoke above her head. “Oh, and of course you won’t try it because Aunt and Uncle Palmer said it’d be sin, isn’t that right?” he asked with a tantalizing grin in a mocking tone. He watched her face contort with anger, his hazel eyes dancing with glee. He knew he had hit at the bull’s eyes. No one ever jeered at Woodren’s inner power and then put her on the same note as her Aunt and Uncle.
A sudden snarling sound flared from her. She didn’t have to listen to anything Aunt and Uncle Palmer said… they never did anything worthy intentionally. She knew that. He was just stupid. She swore at him and knocked the cigarette out of his hand with a smart slap before storming away. An amused laugh from behind her made her ears tingle pink.
As soon as school was over, she pushed pass Ed who was waiting for her and ran back home. Opening the front door of the house, she scurried up the stairs to the third-floor and knocked on Max’s door. When she opened it, Max was already holding Hoopsie in his big hands. Hoopsie sang with joy when she saw Woodren.
“Hoopsie-girl” Woodren whistled with a tilting note that Hoopsie identified instantly. Hoopsie flapped over and landed on her shoulder.
“By the way,” said Max, “she must have knocked over her water because it was wet on the bottom of the cage. She kept trying to drink it. She’s thirsty.”
“Oh you silly Hoopsie! Why did you knock over the water? You know I’m supposed to have 8 cups a day?” she pampered the lovebird with caresses and endearing words before hiding Hoopsie in her shirt and running back to her room.
Woodren placed Hoopsie gently down on the bed post

I would like to think that by the age of 6, i would have turned deaf, from the hands being placed on my ears to escape bullets of words. Shattering around me, i wished to grow up. By the age of 8, i knew my place and, my place knew me. I lived in a minefield, during a war i had not realised was going on. I had unbroken bones which bled from the inside, my mind was torn in to a million pieces and at 10, i didn't know what childhood was, and wished i was alone.

By 16, I fell into a man, a man who's hand it took 2 years to gain from his mother, as she sat there smoking and drinking hot water with lemon to be diet thin. Trimmed the fat a bit when we both left the country, and he got a girl pregnant in India, with twins, which she later aborted; I was in Canada, and 18 when i wished i was blind.

I followed through, travelled the world, til i was 21, became a university student, a best friend, a lesbian, and went to a foreign country were you are forced to use your goodness to be a force of good, which no-one sees as good, but as a hand out, and i lost good friends and saw bad men lose theirs, at 21, I saw the world and i was i was emotionally devoid in a climate of acclaimed peace.

By 26 i was a mother, uncontrollable love and grief flowed through me, like rain is dissolved by the streams in the hills. I picked up my smiling, beautiful child, which had became my night, noon, morning and day, and i wished i could repair the tear within my soul, to encompass all the love i had for my son; and the tear remained patched up with sellotape; I wished I had been a better child.

I lost all consciousness from 27 til 28, love turned to hate, i lost my love, and picked up a young one, if only she was to physically show me what my ex had not been telling me all along; what my ex boyfriends mother made me feel for 2 years, and the way my father left, whilst my mother was pulling me up the stairs, by my hair. At 28 I realised i had made the wrong decision.

From 28, here on out the wind blew, and it blew down to the valleys, and there i found the love of my life. We found and created an indestructible friendship and love, the first only and ever to support me and our goals, she helped me stand up to my father; who then ended our own father/daughter relationship. And not 3 months shy later, when myself and my son mouthed our love and said goodbye. We returned to an empty house. I sacrificed my grief for a small boy who cried for a non-existent person. At 29 my heart was destroyed in a slow burning bonfire.

I replaced the love with the lost, and gladly filled up my tank with lost souls of lost girls, who had lost their souls from some other lost soul, and so the cycle becomes fully reborn. I became someone i knew not of. I had a best friend, who i solely loved because she was the vat of hope i desperately needed in the darkest hour, my biggest cheerleader and my ***** compadre. I remember at 29 celebrating a birthday with 2 friends, and looking at the stars and thinking, is this the meaning of my existence? I remember feeling like the winds were about to change.

30. I had moved house, abandoned my son and old life, for a new job, for new money. I sunk like the titanic who did not see the epic gigantic proportion of iceberg that was about hit the ******* fan. I lost the best friend. Slowly through another relationship did i gleam a sensation of love. It was love, but it was demanding and childish, and i pushed her away before she even asked me to be hers;  in i might add one of the most romantic pursuits ever. She became my sons best friend, my dancing partner, she loved me so very very much, and i hated her for it, i hated her so much for loving me, because i was rightly wrong and she was wrongly right. I just turned 31, and she walked out over an argument over bike helmet. I realised, i was a product of my over endless pursuit of love perfect.

At 32, i am single, broke my back at work, i was then dismissed by that work, moved house, began recovery, had a car accident and here i am beginning again. Yet i am in love now with a man, something i have struggled with for a year, i am at my most humble, deep, profound, sense of being in love, without reciprocation than i have even been, and why........?

Well....

When i was 16 i wanted to be 30, i wanted my life to be over. I wanted the dead years to pass. I wanted the hard work to be gone and done. Not because i didn't want to live, but because i had lived so hard before i was 16, that anything else seemed to exhausting for words to even begin to create.

Except i lived it.
I learnt that love is not words, love is words.
Love is the words of your favourite song, emblazoned on a 8ft wall, that you come home to, and see as a surprise.
Love is someone letting you read your book.
Love is not the voice, the meaning, the tone, the perception or allegorical meaning.
Love is not the abuse, the abuser, their demons, their guilt or their silence.
Love is the unspoken word, the deep stare, the knowing glance, a tender reassurance, that this is ok.
Love is your hand holding mine. N.B Handholding is underrated.
Love is not possession, greed, want or desire. They are not yours, you are not theirs.
Love is invisible, yes it is, red balloons don't mean **** on one day a year.
Love is not perfect, but imperfect.
Love is ruthless, and cut-throat.
Love will burn you to the very last core of your being because you cannot contain its power.
Love is not lies, deceit, untruths, stories told to the naieve because you cannot be a lover and have to be a storyteller.
Love is truth, truth that so bitterly hurts, that you want to be porcelain and break into a million pieces, from the chest .
Love is walking, talking, and laughing, always laughing; love is a smile on a face.
Love is hard, and intolerable, it is passionate, and persistent and it is consistent. It does not break, it is not flimsly like a kite in a storm.
Love does not take offence to personal battles and rebukes of deadly warfare.
Love does not change its mind, be unsure, lack responsbility, or drinks you dry, til you are dried out and up.
Love is not ***, love is not lust, lust is not 'go on, you know you want to', love is not sorry in the morning.
Love is not the ***** all night *** sessions that keep the neighbours awake, but it is in the glory of two bodies where love can be found.
Love condemns. Love is a silent recommendation from Disney, Cathy and Heathcliffe, and Ring of BrightWater.
Love is a minefield and a forbidden playground; it is a secret garden and a theme park.
Love is not alone, and it is not together; it is not your children, or your childrens, children; It is within them and without them.
Love is not to be found on the praying may, in the clouds, in a the pew, or in the incense.
Love cries, love wails, love beats at your very chest, love is in death, love is in the birth.
Love.
Love.
Aaah, hmmm, Love, is an indeterminable force, by which, because of its very nature, no-one can define by logic, except that they will, because, what they cannot understand, they use perception of their blinded sight, deaf ears, and lost senses to put into words, something their heart cannot.
You have everything and you have no-one.
You have reason and you have none to be afraid of.
You are your past, and unfortunately, you are not.
You are your damage, your hurt and your pain, and hardest, your own responsibility.
You are worthy, and you are worthless, you have been shamed and you have been glorified.
You are your own future, your own today, and the yesterday.
And despite all the crap ******* memes,
Love is you, and you are love.

By 32, i had learnt to love myself. Inbetween the grieving, there is a silent knowledge, that by 32 i am in love, with myself.

*I wrote this as a very open outpouring of grief i am currently going through, and also an open realisation of the love within and for myself. It is one of my most open and explicit short stories of my life, and even within that there is lots that has not been recognised, because it has been shortened and reconsidered somewhere else. Thank you

It’s time to take down all the decorations,
They look tatty with no celebrations
to give them purpose,
Bauble’s shine turns to rust,
The tinsel starts wilting
Like flowers left in a vase.

Fragments of sellotape cling to the wrapping paper,
And grab at the walls and window ledges it passes on its way to the fire
Trying to escape death.
At least a kind of death.
Floating up out of the flume to be part of a white Christmas for next year.
A flake of ash that ice molecules wrap themselves around to become a snowflake,
And to think you used to be wrapping paper.

So much tasted of last year,
How much is recyclable?
How much to care about complacence of wastage?
How much should I shed a tear?
How much should I care for carbon footprints and ******* tips?
I don’t want to care at all
It’s too much baggage.

All I want is to fly this year,
I’ll make a kite from the bones of the Christmas tree,
The baubles and tinsel and snow spray stripped,
Now bare of all personality.
Maybe it will fly…
If it doesn’t,
There will always be next year,
Until there isn’t…
…And even when I die someday,
Maybe I will get to be a snowflake.
  And I’ll get to fly that way.

Thunder over Karl Marx’s grave
here comes night
running at me with scissors
dangling sellotape
half finished art projects
still weigh heavy on your mind

like all those missed opportunities,
a C should have been an A.

Pastels not paint. The smudged trail of a finger
across ****** feelings which
surface back to tentative fumblings
with a sister’s friend’s Barbie

the smooth plastic bendable limbs

the positions configured with a one armed Action Man
eagle-eyed and
watching

and if I ever feel down
if I ever feel low
I think back to a story I once read about a woman
who had her face ripped off by a chimpanzee
and as she screamed
the chimpanzee leapt up and down
primitive rage grinning.

Not a pleasant sight I can imagine
but when I feel down,
that’s what I think about,
a woman
and a chimpanzee
ith a face hanging from his primate fangs.

It is the mundanity of the act,
of envisioning your hand gently wrapped around the copper kettle.
Obstinately gripping the pen, while you wring a sheet of paper dry for the right words.
You, cupping my face as if you were holding something precious.
As if I might slip through your fingers.
It is this devastating simplicity that obliterates every shard of my being.
A brick wall, left at the mercy of a gleaming sledgehammer
that is determined to turn everything to dust.

I see your hands everywhere.
In the haze of steam and shower curtains,
the lines dragged in velvet throw pillows,
the cloudy smudges left on a glass of water.
They run faint paths through my hair, their touch ghosts against my eyelid.
If I stare long enough,
your palm is right there, pressing into mine.
Silver cuts through the air and delivers a redundant blow.
The dust scatters once more.

You did not leave a hole
the way everyone said you were bound to.
Empty space cannot exist without everything that surrounds it, yields to it, forgives it,
validates its gaping hollowness.
Empty space is a needle and thread on the dresser, a sellotape dispenser on the desk, a container of soup left on the doorstep with a get-well-soon scribbled on the lid.
Empty space is where you can see remnants of what once was whole.
The faith and conviction that bit by bit, you will put your fragmented pieces back together again.

The nothing you left was so thick and suffocating
that it permeated every room,
filled my lungs to bursting capacity and left me gasping for more.
Its sickly, bitter fragrance danced relentlessly in my nostrils,
as though my suffering was the sweetest symphony ever heard.
It waltzed until I could feel it rising in my throat and leaking from my eyes,
twirled until my head spun.
The nothing you left insisted on making its presence known my every waking moment
and then gleefully romped its way into my nightmares.

It was so quiet, though.
A resigned quiet, like that of the ****** swinging in the gallows,
when everybody holds their breath to watch the pendulum sway.
The crossbeam glistens with last night’s rain and
they trudge back home, muttering to themselves as the dust settles beneath their feet.
I sink into sheets creased by your fingers and watch it sway.

Paper soulmates
Drawn together by fate
Glued into each other's lives persistently
As we are paper soulmates we are prone wear and tear
Torn paper is truly unfixable
You can only try to sellotape together what has been torn apart
Scrunched paper can't truly be smoothed out again,
there is still going to be evidence of past experience
Our story Inked onto the pages of our body
Stained by water, the ink smudges off of us
Our stories ??
unreadable

Dire need of sleep,
Sellotape eyebrow to cheek,
Wandering white sheep,

My nose is out to get me
It’s giving me the fear
It sneaks about when I’m asleep
And whispers in my ear
But when my eyes are open
It’s clearly in my sight
I think I’ll have to stick it down
With Sellotape at night

My nose is pitched against me
When ever someone bakes
It drags me by my helpless face
And points me at the cakes
It leads me into trouble
And I’ve no choice but to follow
It has a lot of pulling power
Although it’s two-thirds hollow

My nose is trying to **** me
I think it’s lost the plot
It sometimes sits there dribbling
And twitching on the spot
It scowls at me with malice
And it’s evil nostrils flare
My nose is picking on me
And I'm slowly going spare

I encountered your spiritless body swaying gently
as your dangling tiptoes longed to reach the tips of the dandelions

I found tacked to the tree, the christian leaflet with the sellotape crucifix that asked
HAVE YOU FOUND JESUS ? , then saying WELL, HE'S FOUND YOU and your Vermillion lipstick scribbling on the reversed side.

Poor you, I could imagine you frantically searching for the sticky notes
( they were on top of the refridgerator Irene)

Poor you, I could visualize you searching for a pencil, realizing that they needed to be sharpened  (you coulda used my Swiss army knife Irene, it was in the rusting tackle box in the garage, sure it was covered in dried fish guts, but you coulda cleaned it)

Poor you, I could picture you finding the pen depleted of it's precious writing fluid, then exploding it's flimsy frame, beneath a lone rabid pink bunny assassin

WELL **** YOU IRENE, **** YOU FOR LEAVING ME

I burnt my hand on the laminator.
You laughed, and continued to talk about tannins,
Drinkable leather,
Even though I couldn't smell them
Over the tobacco from your clothes
That slowly seeps into mine.

I'd come outside with you for a cigarette
A compliment,  maybe not to my lungs,
But I don't mind letting my battered bronchus
Take one more hit so I can laugh with you
About the sommelier placing the wrong cutlery on the table.

I have to keep up
Sharpen my tongue, mind, wit.
More so than those blunt scissors
Which crawled through parchment and maroon ink,
Mimiking the nice red from Chile it described,
Goes well with fish.

I can't imagine you crying,
Though I'm sure you did.
Turning away the sellotape-scarred wooden desk,
Blistered from years of frantic Christmas present wrapping.

Your walk, a sound only comparable to
A bold child clambering up the stairs to bed,
A heavy, determined, "I'm fine" step,
All femur.

Out to the tiny garden, more butts form compost for your vintry.
Only there would you let yourself search,
Rustling through your handbag, past papers and lighters,
For a scrunched up tissue.

i will find hope in anything
if it means there is a chance
you will love me
i will scrape every bit of hope
from the tunnels of our conversation
in order to sellotape a crack in my heart,
i want to believe in the chance
you will love me more than her,
but it is hard to be someone’s world
when they are looking for a country,
she is a town
and i am the universe
however in your eyes,
she is simply
more
than i could
ever be.

You grind
   my yellow cactus
Like an asphalt pomegranite
You slime into my universe
  Like you are not of this planet
You guage my tumbling body

Many fireworks try to chameleon
   The colors bright
But you enter my daytime tea
Like you are of the nite
2 men ******* and you blame the doctor

By spoken word transmits you to lay
Under the gun of my evolution ladder
Sniding God for the interlude in which you play
Screaming geese beckon to your strange turning psychosis
I have all these ribbons and sellotape

I suppose there are many radios in Spain
I guess that my jive-box is a measurement of pain
Tourists chat and snap poloroids
Just a normal day.

The world is not a paper crane.
It’s soggy streets
and pouring rain,
rapping dreary melodies
on your window pane.
It’s side roads
and alley ways,
numb fingers
ripping sellotape
trying to put together broken things.
The world is not a paper crane.
But it’s the smell of grass
on sunny days
and matching china
cups and plates.
It’s warm blankets
round the fire place,
eagles souring
through the great escape
the day it finds its wings.

Take my heart,
guard it,
as I guard it,
it is slightly precious,
it has been ripped out,
burst before,
a bloodless balloon,
infiltrated with cheese wire,
somebody tried to stop it,
prevent it bursting again,
slow punctures repaired,
with minute patches of sellotape,
sorry repairs,
pierced,
allowed gentle entry,
somewhat deflating,
only slowly,
a slow release of aromatic air,
a little spiced,
the heart still beats it's thrill,
despite the the chill,
love me some more,
I know one day you will!
(C) Livvi

i moved it
into a box
under my bed
sealed with more
layers of sellotape
than my mum’s
birthday presents

it’s not exactly
spring cleaning
and i still sleep
on top of these
dusty memories
but it’s okay;

i’ve forgotten what
was in there anyway

stick it together with sellotape
hide the cracks as best you can
as long as it stays in rotund shape
leave the mess for another man

Hooked into the dynamo I go with the flow around with the tyre attached to a wire I fall free
concrete and steel, tell me how does it feel when the blood shows a route that I've mapped, with sellotape on my legs I beg for assistance from strangers, no danger of them hearing this, in that sweet moment of bliss when your heart opens up to spill out the secrets you've kept in a cup with the teeth and a pickled onion because that tastes so nice when you rack up another point on the scoreboard of life where the winners get prizes for lies and the surprise is there's prizes at all.
I fall free,
******* in oxygen like a fish out of water and they never taught me, that to survive I'd have to roll over and die a thousand times in a thousand lines of ******* where the sane truly are insane,
the dynamo slows and I drink ***** and lemonade, trying to recreate another page, I invent, concrete, steel and cement tell me how does it feel when you feel the skin start to peel and the secrets slip out?
I am hooked and whichever way you look at it it's a tag which will follow me through this life into the cemetery and the next life beyond, but beyond all expectations when the illumination of light that filters in through the mirrors in my mind
I find
a peace
in her.

Bah humbug it's Christmas
Time to panic and purchase extra ****
Time for adverts to hype kids to pester parents to scavenge shelves. Time for painful smiles to be painted and pretend all is well as kin folk gather.
Worry about bedding, and seating and gravy boats and tangled lights and sellotape and hiding spaces they want to sink into.
Time for the lonely to feel isolated and the happy to be oblivious.
Time for excess and ** ** **. Christmas songs relentless grinding through bones while millions go without.
Time for charity boxes to rattle because governments ignore.
Time for hangovers and walks of shame.
Devouring more than is needed. Consumed by the season's abused meaning.
Then once done and discarded we have January, Billuary ready to ****** up the spoils.
And the New Year foolishness of resolutions, and lose weight, get back in shape, sales and sales and holiday dreams until the old valentines rolls in, then Paddy's day and Easter, then pressure for the perfect beach ***. It goes on chipping away and chipping and chipping.

First things first
because that's how I rolled.

I don't like new things
and I
don't like what tomorrow brings.

I don't like new people,
I like old.
I like people who are stitched up
with some history,
sewn into
stories they've been told
and
held together with Sellotape
smelling of 'Wintergreen'

I've seen new
and it won't do.

Newspapers
are not new
we've read them
eaten chips out of them
thrown them away and
then they're old,
I like them then.

If i fell would you catch me ?
Would you wrap me in your love ?
If i were broken , would you fix  me ?
Not with sellotape ..with love ?
If i were lost , would you find me ?
And take me... home with you ?
If i were worn out , would you fix me ?
And make me feel brand new
would you ?...would you ?....would you ?

If i built a wall around me
Would you wait for me outside ?
Or would you climb the wall to reach me ?
In this place now .. where i hide
Would you ?...would you ?...could you ?.

I make a mug of tea and butter a slice of toast and am not surprised by her smile, years before and right there, waiting for me with the sound of The Express being folded, crossword almost completed, as she rises for a kiss and a 'hello love', and the trusted 'I've got the kettle on'.
We hug and I sit as she stands and takes down two mugs, just as she recalls something or another that she meant to give me last visit and now wonders where she placed for safe keeping for this moment - and she's gone,
leaving me sitting in the kitchen resting in the familiarity of her calls from the other room telling me she'll find it in a sec and chiding herself, until her cry of finding and her return
with something of my dad's that she thought I'd like or perhaps a grey photo, with a young me, head sliced to fit a frame long discarded, but having left its trace with a stain of Sellotape
- and then we talk of nothing but people and happenings that left family stains we cherish for the pictures they conjure and for the bond left undiminished by time and if anything made stronger by any mug of tea and toast and the still-left-unlocked front door always ready to receive me with a 'hello love' from deep within the home that stayed open forever and now keeps a space open for memories and a silent undertaking that I'll somehow perpetuate this welcome.

If I ever die at the side of the eastern road,
Where the broken bumpers and crisp packets collect,
Where the snow is shovelled into grey slush streams,
Please don’t buy the garish posie from the petrol station,
Don’t buy my memory a card factory teddy bear,
Leave the cards’ platitudes and poems on the shelves at Clinton’s,
Leave the lamp posts and road signs alone,
Pack up your sympathy, take it all home to your mums house.
Remember me as the girl that made you laugh,
Unpack your tears if you have them and give them to your pillow,
Give them to Facebook if you must, or give them to your friends.
I promise I’d do the same for you,
Unless you’d rather be remembered by straggling tinsel clinging to a lamp post by one piece of damp, desperate sellotape.
By wilting white roses dropping sad brown petals onto chewing gum tainted tarmac.
Unless you’d like to be known as the man whose name is scrawled in biro inside of a cheap card blutacked onto the sign for the Havant bypass.
In which case I’ll drag my sympathy to Clinton’s, to card factory and my closest petrol station.
I’ll say goodbye to the tune of sirens and rattling sainsburys lorries.
Then cry alone each time I drive past your withering memorial and try to remember to clean it up next week.

ME ALRIGHT!

She watches as
I write.

The soft wheeze of lead
leaving words in its wake

like seagulls following
the trail of a ship

clamouring after
the refuse of the mind.

Soon the page is
littered with words.

They crawl across the page
in their best 4B.

It pleases her to see
the graphite leave these

tracings of me
upon...beyond...the white.

She looks at the journey of my hand
as if writing were a magic rite.

She asks if she can
draw.

"Sure..." I say
and the words cease.

I just put the tittle
on an small i and j.

The words splashed across the page
like puddles of thought drying in the sun.

I hand her the pencil.

She shakes it and shakes it.
And shakes it.

"What's that for?"
I dare to ask.

"The pencil is too full of words.
I want a pencil full of lines."

"I see..." I say
even though I don't really.

Well, it seems  to work for
nothing comes out but line after line.

She lost in the little planet of
her intense concentration.

She throws in the odd curve
and a wonky circle every now and then.

The lines look confused
not too sure just what

they are doing
on this scrap of paper.

I ask her what
the lines mean.

"The lines are you of course.
See...?"

"I see..." I say
although I don't really.

But indeed in this
drawing I am

very much
as she sees me.

The page never lies.
These are scribbles that were my eyes.

I have as it happens
eyes five

stuck on the side of
what appears to be a head.

And yes only one leg.
One leg with seven toes.

An abstract alien
bird father.

It takes pride of place
Sellotape'd to the fridge.

"Yep...that's me
alright!"

I have lain here for seven eternities,
Waiting to begin a journey
False starting numerously
Aching joints and mouth as dry as sellotape,
Ignorant of all calls to justice
Clarions unsettling my sleep,
Everything an interlude,
With mottled hands I pray to a statue of a blues singer on my mantelpiece,
Yet again I awake to the sun setting,
Basketball shoes almost comically big on my finger-toed feet.

It was where all of life’s

celebrations took place.

Where we took things

apart when our mother

was out of the house.


It was where one would find

string, rubber bands, matches,

washers, safety pins, sellotape,

batteries, bottle-openers, pencils.


It was where the visitors were

entertained; when the best sheet

In the house would be washed,

Ironed, creased and made to look

like the finest of Irish linen.


It was where there was full and

plenty, candles at Christmas,

and where the dog knew which

one of us sat too far away from it.


It was where letters were written,

bills opened. Where we

discussed politics and shared

news and views and stories.


It was where everything was put

before being placed on a shelf.


It’s where we'd hide from

household disputes and

tribunals in the sky but the

lightning always found us


It was where heavy heads in

cupped palms rested on elbows

when there was nothing else

to put there.