You explode with questions,
Spitting and swarming,
Seeking satisfaction-
But answers don’t soothe,
Don’t touch the depths.
They make them sting,
Salt on skin torn straight
Through to shredded heart:
My darling, you’re bleeding out,
I can see.
I can see. You look at me,
Me, the face of all that’s wrong. Continue reading
The door swung open. I didn’t even realise that I’d found the key.
She sidled up to me at the end of the day and told me how much it had meant to her, that little text message with a scripture verse and a “you can do all the things this week!”
All the weeks I’d been trying to find a connection point with her and in the end it was a tiny, almost throwaway act that forged it. It unlocked her. It unlocked her group of friends, who seemed impenetrable from the outside. Continue reading
I love comfort. Give me a blanket and a cup of tea and I’ll delight in daydreams for hours. This love of comfort often finds me hoarding good intentions without giving them wings and releasing them. In other words, I get cases of chronic laziness.
Because of this I dislike irritation. Irritation… well… irritation irritates! It’s like the person I cross the road to avoid. In recent months, however, I’ve started to view it as a friend. Continue reading
This time last year I impulse-bought a violin. Inspired by a secondary school chamber orchestra and a desire for distraction, I embarked on becoming a violin maestro. Let me clue you in right now. Becoming a violin maestro is hard, really hard.
I plunged through thirty minutes of practice per day for a few months- scales, studies, trad pieces-
and then I hit the wall.
The really unimpressive part? I didn’t hit it at full force with a great big wallop. More like I slowly slid to the ground and then nudged myself inch by inch until the wall was near enough to touch with my aching hand if I stretched my shoulder the right way.
I needed help.
He sat across the table from me. After we ran through a couple of sentences and smiles, each of us retreated, staring at our plates in silence. Neither of us had words for what we wanted to say.
After an agonising minute, he looked up, pointed at the ketchup bottle and said one word, “Rot”.
Thirty eight days ago a writing friend emailed me to ask me how my writing was going. I didn’t reply for two reasons. One: I haven’t been writing. Two: I wasn’t ready to face the fact that I haven’t been writing.
Two days ago a poetic friend pointed out that a sentence I’d quoted in a comment didn’t make sense and that I hadn’t noticed either while reading it or while reproducing it.
I started thinking that it’s time to get my write on again.
I remember when receiving a bag of coal for Christmas would have been considered a punishment and receiving a pair of socks would have been boring. 20+ years later (and with a real feel temperature of -6c last night*) I’d be delighted if someone treated me to coal **and socks***. A change in perspective determines how you respond to your circumstances! Continue reading
