tonight

another day, another wedding. as they say, the bride was beautiful. i was so happy for her that i cried.

at first he ignored me, so i thought, "two can play this game." but i was wrong. i can't play that game. i lose miserably every time.

at the reception we yell a conversation across the table before i go and sit with him. you know, i think we could talk for an eternity and still not run out of words to say.

at some point he makes a quip about the groom always needing to say sorry whether he's wrong or right and the lady next to him laughs. "i think you're ready to get married" she says. his eyes lock with mine and he says, slowly, "maybe not quite yet."

all the way home i'm replaying what he said, what i felt, how he looked at me with that secret smile that says, "we know something nobody else does."

this night is sparkling/don't you let it go/i'm wonderstruck/blushing all the way home.

i'm enchanted with you. you know it. wait for me.

please.

jericho

this morning when i wake up i stand on the scales. i don't usually do this because it's against the rules and i'm a good little girl, but for some reason i think i should today. 49.0 stares back at me. it doesn't mean anything. i smile and get off the scale and into the shower, singing.

one to hannah. nought to ed.

on my way home from school i go to my old binge place for the first time since recovery. i sit at my old table and eat my fear food. calmly. slowly. i even enjoy it.

two to hannah.

at home i see a picture of a wintergirl, deep in the ice and snow of dangerland. her scapulae look like wings, her vertebrae like a stack of coins within her hollow flesh. "that's not what beauty is," i say and turn off the computer.

three to me.

last week i ate an egg yolk. this week it was a burger. next week i'll be invincible.

the stone walls i've built around myself are tumbling. i promise i won't cry.

house of cards

sitting in class today i watch the rain drip down the window panes, slide like silent tears towards the ground three storeys down. my lecturer drones on about the rose theory. it sounds pretty, but it's not. it's physics in the guise of floristry.

i take myself away. in my world it is calm and the sunshine tickles my bare toes and makes me laugh. the sky is an endless blue, an upended bowl above me and there i am, lying on my back in the midst of the prairie grass. i'm invisible to everyone except those who are looking.

g snaps me out of my trance. "earth to h."

later, in my boarding house, i sit on my bed. i don't like this place. everywhere i look reminds me of last year - the year i was sick. at dinner i cut my food into tiny pieces - not because i'm afraid, but because it's habit in this place.

now i sit on my bed and wrap myself in the mink blanket. house of memories. house of cards. i wish you would come and knock it down.

i take myself back to my dream world and lose myself in my version of reality.

tulips

today on my way up to school i stop at the cemetery. i take off my sandals and walk barefoot under the oak trees beside the hundred year old graves. everything around is dry and cold. grey slabs of concrete, crinkled brown leaves. it's perpetually winter in this place.

i take a bunch of pink tulips with me and lay them on the littlest graves. children.

right there, in that moment, i am silent. quiet. inside and out. i tread through the leaves and look up at the pink-blue sky above the trees. i feel connected to the world around me. my soul is at rest.

i keep driving west, following the path of the setting sun. the last orange rays stream down behind the clouds, make ladders in the sky from earth to heaven. i want to fly up into the sunbeams, ride on the wings of the wind.

i am alive.

on and on

24 days. 576 hours. 34,560 minutes. over two million seconds.

eternity. without you.

i always liked the idea of living forever. at high school someone once asked me what my preferred method of dying would be. i said i didn't intend to die. i was going to live forever. florence laughed and said, "we'll all be dead in our graves, but there h will be - slowing grasping the next rung of eternity."

i realise now though that eternity without you would be unbearable. 24 days is bad enough.

every night i kiss your picture goodnight and go to sleep wondering if i come to your mind as often as you come to mine.

then after that two million-something seconds i hear from you.

you miss me. i miss you too.

subconscious

i used to wonder why, when you were all that was on my mind, i didn't dream of you more. you never came into my dreams. not once. it was odd considering that every waking moment was taken up with you.

maybe because dreams are what is in your subconscious and you were very much in my conscious mind. all the time. so there was no need to dream of you.

now that we are over, and i do not think of you so often, you are all i dream about. every night you come to me and i am happy.

in waking i am only happy without you, in sleep i am only happy with you.

does my sleeping self know something that i have yet to realise?