Why are homes made of grief? The paint peels away, and the walls are repainted until the tea thrown on the wall is not staining anybody’s memory but your own, and the old furniture is swapped out for something new that you never touched.
The old, ugly table. Light brown, almost yellowish. Ochre, with green and blue veins all over the top. Underneath rested a shelf for books and old newspapers. When I was younger I would lie on the floor with my head under the table, practising for when I get locked inside a small wooden box, something that for a long time I believed was bound to happen to me. All kinds of punishments are bound to happen to me.
The new table is darker, sturdier; it is confident of its brownness, its earthiness. The bottom slab contains snacks and old, dried flowers that my mum likes to preserve. The food served on this table is always less, and never satiates me. This piece of wood is my enemy, and the tablecloth is merely a coffin for everything that I have lost in this house while I was gone. I wish to be gone all the time.
I was never an angry child. I was stubborn, but I was quiet about it. I started howling my tears when I turned 14, but until then, it was all quiet, stoic. I am not a child anymore, but I am angry. There’s an inverse proportion in terms of growth. The older I get, the angrier I get. Not a child, but definitely childish.
Is it okay to ask things to go my way all the time? Should the world stop rotating when I am having a hard time? Does it really matter that much?
The defendant would like to pose some counter questions. Shouldn’t the world stop when my heart does, ten times a day? Shouldn’t the people I love go into a state of stillness when my world starts to collapse? What if I tell you there is only one person I love? Am I fair in wanting the suffering of mine to entrench his insides too, like a disease from my cunt to his mouth, permeating him until he is on his knees.
Surely I/you don’t want that?
The defendant is stubborn. Yes I want that. It’s the mere act of togetherness throughout it all that binds us, so why not give in to it?
Lately, homes are also made of emptiness. I don’t have any clothes to wear here anymore. Everything has been cleared out. My books have been rearranged. There is no space for me to keep my things. I am not allowed in the kitchen anymore. There isn’t enough space for me here. I brought my own shampoo this time.
There is still a phantom routine I am trying to fall back on, trying to make myself remember. I am the only one here who is responsible for consoling myself. Capable, definitely not, but surely alone in it all. I try to do the things I would do. I stay up at night, trying to read. I sort through my things. I get tired easily. My legs hurt, the soles of my feet are undergoing some nervous explosion, making it hard to walk. I walked a lot today, running behind a jilted and angry mother, apologising for something that I might have been responsible for.
I bought myself a big bottle of Limca, the soft drink she and I would share in simpler times. I got her lipstick and bangles. All of it spurned. So I sit on this couch, next to things I don’t recognise anymore. I drink all the lemony grey liquid in my glass, I use the lipstick as blush, and the bangles were thrown during one of the higher tides of anger rising against my chest all the time.
I am writing things in my notebook. Scribbling words and playing a game of patience, distracting the inner lonely and angry child.
Today was hot, eventful and very tiring. I wish to retire to my bedroom and lie down until sweet sweet sleep dawns upon me.
I do not have a bedroom. I wake up at 6 here, no matter when I go to bed.
I spent the day fantasising about running away and raising a child on my own. I thought of all the sweet things I would buy for myself once I am living away and alone in a nice place. I tried really hard to remember the proof of love in my life but it felt vapid and far away, and it almost choked me into a silence that could have been permanent. I haven’t spoken in the last few hours.
Walking around in my city, I started placing words together to make phrases that would amuse me.
Bildungsroman buildings. Brutalist heartitecture. Superfluous veins. Needling trees. Symptomatic sadness.
I entered a stupid little mall with my friend, too late for the thing we were supposed to go for. I came across Oisin Moran’s Words that do not Exist but Should. This coincidence pleased something in me, I could almost hear a lyre go off in the gentlest manner possible, somewhere on the beachy terrain on the map of my inner body. I came out of that place and the moment had fluttered away, somewhere out the window. I felt bitter again. I am bittered too easily. I did not drink a beer, I did not eat the whole day. I came home to Portrait of Mother As A Time Bomb.
I am now alive in the smallest way possible, the clock ticking away, the bomb sleeping away. I will lie down next to her in an hour or so, watch a stupid show for a while, until my eyes feel like they’re bleeding. I could use a cigarette right now. A laugh. A gun in my mouth. A kiss. It’s all the same, Johny.
Well my goodness gracious let me tell you the news
My head's been wet with the midnight dew
I've been down on bended knee
Talkin' to the man from Galilee – One Piece At A Time
I fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll be back again
And again, and again, and again
And again, and again… – Highwayman
i adore your imagery so much
hauntingly beautiful, loved it