All posts tagged: life

Fixer-Upper #FridayFictioneers

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‘You realise no one is going to buy this place, right?’ Adam’s hand appeared above the back of the sofa, stray screwdriver retrieved. Sally took it off him, one knee wedged so firmly between the cushions that she stayed stuck when she tried to stand. ‘It’s a fixer-upper,’ she shrugged. ‘People like that sort of thing.’ ‘No, they think they like it,’ said Adam. He’d stood up and Sally choked down a laugh at the dust wig haloing his bald head. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Nothing, nothing,’ Sally spluttered. ‘Just maybe you’re right. It might be time to get a hoover.’

Words For Silent, Empty Rooms

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I’m still getting used to this lion in my mouth. But sometimes the notion of seen and not heard still aches in my chest, despite the waterfall of words I seem to spout whenever my lips part.   When you’re trying to stay silent, some times it helps if you cover up the abscene with something meaningless and hollow, like empty poetry.   Laughter is also good. If you can laugh about it, it can’t of been so bad.   But time can chip away at you if you let it. Too much silence can eat the soul of you completely. Not matter how small the seed.   If we just don’t mention it, ignore it and carry on, then it’s not that big of a deal so why make a fuss.   Women always make a fuss.   At night I feel silly, walking with my car keys turned to the sharp edge of a key-chain, cold and hard against my palm   Alone is when I think about the school corridor, his face …

The Office Bitch

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He called her The Office Bitch, to her face. Drops the comment like a hot coal before she climbs into a taxi home and I turn my car keys over in my hand, heels sharp on the concrete, the elastic in my shoulders twisting tighter as the words sink in.   I can’t help but repeat it, turn the words over in my mouth the needles of the teeth still there, as I wonder if he’d of said the same were she a man. Would she have had to swallow it, if she were a man. Because at worst he would have been a bastard. Not The Office One.   I wanted to add another stanza to this but nothing seemed to work so I’m going to sleep on it any maybe come back to this piece another day. In the meantime I’m relatively happy with how it works at the moment. I’d love to hear your feedback though.

Shadow Of A Sin

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In the calm of an empty room I found Pride behind the mirror glass, and coaxed it into daylight. I fanned flames from ash with a slip of red silk, slashed open white to the skin, bared like orange pith, small defense against an outside world. Like water, Pride slipped from me at a doorway and in the mirror was only sin the colour of shame. Grey again in the ruins of an inferno, I told myself no one was looking at me anyway.  

A Poem And A Blog Party All In One!

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Dream State Darkening “Slowly we slept into our fears” Ritwik Some nights the dreams slip past like minnow, dark and shadowy in the water. I am frozen, mud stuck and slow with limbs like old trophies bent, broken, scratched, the polish flaking like old paint till the wooden skeleton is left with all its pitted fragility, no more than a twig shivering in the storm. When I wake, I am still the scarecrow. Clothes tacked on in mockery of skin. Here I know the birds do not fear me. Instead they will come in flocks to peck at what is left when the last of me is withered and gone to dust. Some nights the dreams slip past like minnow, dark and shadowy in the water, and dawn is brought on by blinking, slow and succulent it bleeds through the glass, an orange splitting from its skin. In an echo of better days the dreams swim deeper, far enough that I can pretend to forget. These are the moments of peace between the nightmares. We’re …

Afternoon Shallows

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I found the pip between my teeth an hour after the bitter bite of garden currents had faded from my tongue.   In the middle of a meeting, too close between collegues to spit or pick the pith from my mouth.   Instead I chased it from cheek to cheek along the ring of my lower lip to the hollow beside my molars.   The presenter lost his place, tapped again at his laptop, muttered a word , asked someone to call IT.   I swallowed by accident. Choked, drew a worried glance, waved it away with a glass of water.   Outside the cleaner checked bins, roll of bags at her hip, quick, quiet between the desks, she whisked any evidence away.   The Summer heat has been making it difficult to sit down and write. Nowhere feels comfortable and I’m constantly shifting position to try and ease that sticky, gross feeling that comes with trying to do anything at all during hot, summer days. I’d really love to hear people’s thoughts on this …

How Not To Write – Doing Battle With Perfection

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Have you ever sat down and written the first three lines of something, only to hit the backspace like a maniac a few moments later? It’s so easy to throw out work if it doesn’t seem to be going in the direction that you want it to, and often that can lead to us spinning in circles, rewriting the same sentence over and over again. I know this because it’s something I do repeatedly. For example, I’m currently holding my 70,000 word manuscript over the metaphorical bin because I can’t see how it will end. The plot is rambling and half-baked, I’ve got characters that aren’t where they need to be, the whole thing feels like a failure. In short I want to throw it away and start from scratch. But! If I do that there’s a good chance I’ll never actually get finishing the damn thing because next time I hit a snag in the draft, I’ll want to start over all over again. Instead I’m going to remind myself of a Neil Gaiman …