She Must Be Mad Read online

  No choice in whether it cements a building for their ego or a fence around a field of flourishing flowers

  All grown for you

  It is what it is until it isn’t quite it anymore

  Until you become loathsome for the quibbling quirks of comfort

  And love writes as a rule to deplore

  Makes perfect logical sense, sure

  Until the it that isn’t and the was that wasn’t

  Is just a silhouette of your insecurity

  And truly nothing more.

  weight of you

  As my body writhes around a different bed

  It feels taller even though it’s not

  Semi-clothed and cold it feels different

  But not lonely

  It feels older and as though it knows further and fresh

  It learns less of you and no wider of me

  But it understands something new

  That isn’t uncomfortable

  It just wants to find you again and for you to know me once more

  And for that once more to see what I wished you’d seen before

  Before it would cry out a screech of heart strung bedlam

  Lying with a bread-bloated belly that looked pregnant

  Pregnant with the thought of you

  Coming back to bed soon

  But you didn’t

  Different cities and marbled skies

  Slow the pace between us

  And Indian spices heat the burn our tongues loved together

  But now saffron and chai

  Taste an unsavoury uncleanness

  There is no loneliness to chew

  Just a space in the creases of linen

  That should belong to the weight of you.

  lipstick

  Let me kiss you close mouthed

  Let me rouge your bitter cheeks

  With this darker red

  Let me wrap the gentle curve of my body

  Into someone else’s bed

  I’ll let you wipe the cherry plum stain off

  With the memory of when you said

  ‘Cheer up sweetheart, the thing with

  People like you, is they’ll only love you

  When you’re dead.’

  lovebites

  I hadn’t noticed it at first

  It was done with such kindness

  It hadn’t thought to hurt

  But as I stumble off the train

  With my knickers hitching my skirt

  It would’ve been nice to know of the night

  That instead of just leaving my phone charger behind

  I’d be taking away a lovebite

  A ‘hickey’

  A purple blue yellow not nearly skin-coloured enough to cover

  With make-up

  Tricky

  Situation

  Learning to flatten my tones from their guilty high fluctuations

  When I say

  It’s eczema?!

  At school a girl had one on her head

  And said

  She’d headbutted a cupboard

  And cut in a fringe before the teachers had discovered it

  Is so silly that they must be hidden

  That something which once brought pleasure

  Is suddenly forbidden

  Like, grossly forbidden

  Like, I walked into a party and everyone was shocked

  That I was either bursting with pride

  Or should be embarrassed that I’d forgot

  To slap on some concealer

  Or that I was akin to a slapper who’d hooked up with a drug dealer

  Which for the record would be fine

  It’s my neck to be decorated by whomever I desire

  Minutes of passion holstered to a circle

  That gets flashed every now and again

  Like being autographed with a biological purple pen

  It’s a bruise from a kiss

  Not a place keeper for a fist

  Just a splodge of romance stamped profoundly pissed

  It’s as fleeting as the youth we’re scared to miss

  As it’s administered

  I struggle to cast it off as something sinister

  And for whatever attention they seem to seek

  I’m happy to laugh in their existence

  And thank god that they only last a week.

  with his assistants

  She squirms nearly naked beside me

  Lollipop stick legs

  Like a Lowry

  Waiting to be coloured

  I fill her in best I can

  With a haze-hugged recital

  Madness over just one man

  It splutters slurred and sloppy

  I feel her skin soft and on me

  She breathes a sigh drenched in

  Yawns for coffee

  We put on one of his shirts together

  Find the slunked-off socks

  And bury down secrets we now have to keep forever

  His face is unimaginable

  He’d have guessed it sooner

  Had his lust been made more tangible

  But he was busy

  When we were busy for him.

  doubletree by hilton

  Mesmeric in the most disarming demanding way

  I flash honesty brazen and wasted

  As you kiss the words from out my mouth as though they’re still untasted

  Satiated

  We lay

  As you press your head upon me and lie about my beauty as though it’s your unspoken duty

  I feel safe because you’ve said it

  Feel a rush of adrenaline and then push it from my head

  You said it

  I watched you close your eyes and forget it for a second

  And then deny it

  You falsify your worth with memories unjust

  You try nothing more than to make me feel I was once untouched

  And now all I want

  Is for the history before us

  To erase in diluted drops

  That you slipped along my index fingers

  When in this heat my rings got stuck.

  porn

  She moans

  As he throws

  Her body

  From arched feline back

  To face in the pillow on her tummy

  He pulls her by the ponytail

  Her eyes widen with excitement

  Loneliness

  As well

  Banshee screams and hollow slaps

  Perfect nudity and waxed arse cracks

  Half taken by the throng of flung-off thongs

  I’m bemused and sad and thinking

  Why do they never show the naps?

  The intimate legs twined like spaghetti

  Cooked and thrown back in the pack

  Stuck with starchy love

  That’s the real magic, that

  That’s what turns me on

  When after all the sheets have seen

  Where you lay and nose touches nose

  And you still know where to kiss

  With the lights still off

  Because you’re lit up in a childlike beam

  And through panting pause your mind wanders lost

  Feeling your skin cling innate to one another

  Like a baby to a breast

  That first breath

  When you exhale and simmer,

  Two maudlin corpses

  Too hot and they still shiver

  Craving more whilst digesting a slither

  Of moments ago

  She moans

  As he throws

  Her body

  Wanting it with a posture comfy

  He runs his fingers through her hair

  And tells her that she’s lovely

  Beautiful in fact

  He grabs her by the waist

  As she holds his face

  And steadies gaze

  Whispers lightly in his ear

 
; I’d rather make love to you

  Than just simply let you fuck me

  There is plenty of room for explicits in complicity

  Now that I’d understand

  A prude I’d never claim to be

  Though nor a connoisseur of wild intimacy

  I’ve always taken it how it’s given to me

  … directed it occasionally

  But there’s something that seems strange to me

  That we get off on a close-up of a staged aggressive filthy

  When we all know in reality

  The best is sweet and purely

  Ends the same

  The two of you, vulnerable and glowing

  With the taste of each other’s name.

  evolution

  Days later

  Paint-like

  Each layer peels

  And falls from my lips

  That you bit

  And thus become features

  That are no longer owned by your kiss.

  snapple lid facts

  An octopus has three hearts

  How does he find time to use them?

  Dexterous in his tentacle touch

  It must be hard to know what’s a tickle from abuse to them

  What space there is for entertaining a mermaid or a sea urchin

  He doesn’t have to unpick beauty from sense or smarts from lust

  He can just drink them all up

  In a salty ablution

  And sit drunk

  Sounds nice but

  I bet it’s secret emotional hassle

  I bet he’d prefer to slurp a sluice of Snapple

  What decisions are necessary to make when there’s a home for each mistake

  All kept warm and left unsearching

  How does he find time to use them when he needs it all just to keep them working?

  Keep each beat in syncopation

  Without disrupting the sea’s heady and unforgiving intention

  Selling him gravelly bits of information

  As he presses his ear to a shell

  How does he decide what’s worth keeping or best shelved?

  How does he pick what’s right and fulfilling

  When he’s got three beating organs never fit to burst or to be pained and unspilling

  How does he feel anything

  When he’s got capacity for so much?

  Squirming neatly on the sea bed

  He stretches out to disturb the dust

  Half swim half sleep he imagines what it would be like to be us

  How simple it could be

  To reserve all of his energy

  Into just one place to love.

  kaleidoscope

  As you bashed my eyes from blue

  These distorted shapes were carved by you

  Until swiftly all I saw judged hope

  As you threw me in your kaleidoscope

  Pushed down a misted barrel lens

  Creasing wraps and crushing tenths

  Squinting smiles as you kissed wrists

  and squaring miles on homebound trips

  I wandered calm for months before

  Became the girl you swore unsworn

  And now headfirst it smacks me clean

  You conjured colours I can’t see

  A fool I often am

  But tonight a fool I’ll gladly be.

  rosie cheeks

  It smells as delicious

  As my mind told me so

  And as its thorns graze my thigh

  I apologise before its beauty

  And cry not for pain

  But for getting too close

  To something much more delicate than I

  And not expecting to leave bloodied.

  app cheats

  Their names together wash over me

  Syncopated

  Hypnotic

  Tepid water rushes through my sinuses

  Until it heats to a gentle boil

  Slow bubble, rising

  To sit along my lash line

  As a stagnant source

  Awaiting provocation

  Syncopated

  Hypnotic

  Vindicated and

  Neurotic

  I almost wanted them to

  Sound like a flood

  I scrounge for photos of

  Them in love

  I rip through feeds

  And rehash texts

  And play out what

  He didn’t say next

  As though he did

  I am crazed by the drama

  That has been denied

  And scroll through three years of holiday photos

  That he profiled as a lie.

  first west service

  He pressed his palms against my breasts

  On a crowded bus

  Cradling the darkness in my head

  Until it felt like it was just us

  And when we got back to his

  In solitude we could melt

  I went to tell him who I was

  But learnt he wasn’t there for how I felt.

  You sit with your tongue pained out of your mouth like an artist, bottle of stolen rum from your parents’ cabinet in one hand and an emptied bottle of water between your thighs.

  Don’t. Spill. Anything.

  You learned only last night that Malibu has a particularly unforgiving stench when left to soak in carpet. Neatly, you tuck it into your school bag, pocket four pound coins from your father’s parking meter compartment in his Volvo estate and head to school on a cold Friday morning. The night is young. The night is so young you’re checking for spillage in double maths and texting a boy from the school down the road ‘wuu2 tonight?’ with one eye on algebra and the other on your LG Shine phone. You know what he’s up to.

  It feels like the longest day of your life, in hindsight nothing really does ever feel as long as today. You are a worthy warrior that fights each pounding heart thump of anxious anticipation in her stride, you valiantly navigate the hours with nothing but a muted floral bodycon skirt and silk low-cut top awaiting to be loaded as ammunition. The day dribbles off into the later afternoon and you salivate to evening, thirsty dry mouth puckering in your mother’s lipgloss. The prolonged MSN chat has been aching, tension-building, near nausea. Tonight you’ll have your first kiss. You know it, you can see it, you have dreamt enough Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging scenes, it will be tonight. It must be. You feel so terrifyingly far behind that if it’s not, womanhood will never greet you. You are not a girl nor a woman, you are an unwanted potato in a packet, left to half-freeze too close to the back of the fridge. It must be tonight. The process prior is almost ceremonial, the half a beer that leaves you giddy is a toast to the gods of fate, the borrowed pair of tanned tights is your celebration wear, the panic attack in the locked bathroom of the party before you’ve met is a nod and a vow to the severity of the process. It’s all quite dumb, all quite ridiculous, all quite right. The party is quickening in pace, the toilet door you have bolted is being kicked at to make way for an early casualty of apple sours, you steady your defences and anchor a root in a confidence you have grown in that moment. Animalistic in your approach, you sidle past each faux drunken swaying body, pushing through a living room, a kitchen, and then to a garden with purpose. There he is. Too tall in his body he has not yet grown into, he leans on a trellis in the rain. You say your name at him like a greeting. He nods, accepting, watching your Bebo user flash before his squinted eyeline. You talk. It is all so unbearably awkward that you look for other familiar faces you can slope off with. You slope off with him. Backs against a forgotten Wendy house, you kiss. It’s unlike anything. No metaphor, no simile, no book you read too young. It’s tongues and hot flushed panic, it’s anxiety boiled to a surface of pure sugar resin that you bite from each other’s lips. It’s a morishness sans lust, it feels innate. It feels as though there is an end point you must discover but you only have the tools to enquire and not conquer. It is feeli
ng without thought for the first time. It’s delicious – brief flashes of mortified and embarrassed – but delicious. No kiss will ever be the same. Some more prolific, some more dramatic, some more regretful, some more meaningful. But none the same. None more swift and intoxicating. None that was so unashamedly stenched with a mud-stained half hangover that when you head to text him the next morning, the ambush of ‘WAHEEEEEEEY!!! I SAW YOU LAST NIGHT!!’ splashed across your Facebook wall lights you with unabashed pride that nothing else will ever give you. You later realise, much much later, that the grin that lasted for weeks was the end of all those months of feeling like ‘the fat friend’, ‘the nerd in disguise’, ‘the uncool one’, ‘the forgettable one’. They were all sad endured lies because within those was ‘the girl that would never be kissed’. And she was. And she would be again.

  the first time

  Numbed nerves and conceited confidence

  We fall into a depth of expectation

  Familiarity grins back at us

  And it laughs

  And we laugh

  Complexities lace around your features

  Truth curling through my tongue

  Slicing through a mist of excitement

  Spilling to curdle into bittersweet reality

  Mistaken as a mistake

  As your slow body collapses

  Next to me I watch your mind spin

  Tentative teeth caging your thoughts

  Until we digress into secrets

  Misjudged, misinterpreted, mishaps

  We are wondering

  You are lost and I have lost.

  love part 2

  Love is going to smack you in such a way you don’t recognise it, from the hands of a man whose fingers you wouldn’t trust on a trigger. Love isn’t what you thought. It’s not what you were ever expecting. In your twenties, naked body sprawled across someone’s bathroom, throwing up all within you, listening to the clink of plates as he toasts you crumpets having just cleaned up your mess, you muster, ‘I love you.’ Weird. Uncomfortable. What?! It’s all too much to fathom. Surely you can’t be that basic? It changes.

  One night, when you are in his bed, his hot sticky breath scalds your skin with a thick jamminess, it prickles quick temperate flashes along your neckline and you begin to cry. You reimagine all the times he stopped to take your photograph. ‘What are you doing? I look so gross, stop it. What sort of memory is this?!’ You’d bat, pulling strands of hair from behind your ears over your face to hide. ‘It’s only for me!’ Only for him? You could never quite grasp why anyone would want a collection of pictures of you with burnt rosacea red cheeks, often hungover, in his pyjama tops, in budget cafés, until right now. It stings you as he leans to kiss you and you can’t pucker because all you can do is cry. It’s not really even a cry, it’s a sob. A snot on your chin, belly aching screech of water works. He is confused. His gentle comforting strokes force your body rigid. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, just change the song. It always makes me sad.’ This is partly true. The other part loops behind your eyelids as you press them into the pillow as he panic searches for something new. It won’t stop. Never had an end been so grotesquely visceral. Never had a projected moment of foresight clung to your brain as though nothing else would ever be more true. When would anyone sit and look through such bizarre, such random, such inane photos?