I could see them from my bedroom, walking up my drive hand in hand. I held onto the windowsill for dear life and prayed that the net curtains wouldn’t betray me. They were smiling and laughing. Fuckers.
The doorbell went three times. They knocked. Why would I answer? He brought her. The bastard.
Once they’d laughed their way back up the drive and I lost sight of them I felt just as lost. I never saw them apart now. She-and-him. He-and-she. They were more than an item, they were an entity. She smothered, there was no space for me. I was living in a drought.
Three short sharp buzzes brought me his words from down the street: “Just came round, did I miss you?” I don’t fucking know darling, you tell me.
The harder I’m pushed, the more calloused I become. There are places I can’t feel. There are things I can’t think without being dizzy from the numbness. Hope and the lack of that sickening feeling are both so impossible.
Imagine the last place on earth to sleep. Imagine being thrown a blanket and told everyone else curls up the same way. Antipathy for the corridor that your footsteps echo down, you want nothing more than to run barefoot to the garden and lie in the grass.
The idea of weaving something then cutting the strings is nauseating. I’m not searching for the cherub, the flowerbed. Just a pair of hands to hold me steady and a reason to stay inside.
Somehow, I seem to spend my nights without sleep. I rest, yes, but it’s not the same. I wake up, yes, but that does not mean I sleep. Many days I seem to float about in a haze and it’s almost an ache, bordering on numbness, this sleepless taste in the back of my skull. This lack becomes routine and I fill the sleepless hours where I can function with work and words so on the rare occasion that elusive vixen Slumber lies with me I find I’ve no time for anything.
Then I have the repetitive question asked of myself: when do I function better? When I throw myself into work and words with a numbness fit to rival any? Or when I’m so driven and tense and aware that I throw myself into anything I choose to turn my hand to? When I feel too much altogether or next to nothing?
