alone and bored
you swear to god there’s mouse
behind your fridge
waiting for a rupture in the silence
you know that this could go on forever
counting the tiny scars on your arms
you miss having a cat
Amanda
She is in pyjamas
too small but
they were on special
waiting in line for the
money machine
what are all
these fuckers staring
at?
she takes care not to
make way for a
business woman
& her
brisk, ironed
steps
her bank account
contains
only what was
expected
the screen flickers
laughs at her
do you have any
other requests?
No.
she laughs back
spit flies from
her mouth
tits bounce more
than they should
the thin man behind her
steps back
fuck him
she shoves him aside
with a rubbery shoulder
and stomps on.
boy
you have grown tall, boy
with your hair long
but your bones hollow,
like paper, blue tacked
on a wall
to cover a hole that just happened
when you were angry
and thought
you were right
you don’t understand, not yet
you like to jump off things, don’t you?
send your body flailing
& you come back to us, red, saying
the water’s hard, from that distance
your mother says she remembers, when you needed
her hand to hold your head up
in my family i am the one who ruins things
i light fires on accident, or on purpose and it takes me too long to put them out
i say the wrong things, and don’t realise until everyone has finished staring at me
and they’re all back to eating their peas
i was the one who got the computer wet,
i didn’t notice fogginess creeping across the screen,
& then i tried to say it wasn’t me
i cover their white paint in smudges
they cover my smudges in white paint
with all the layers
the walls are getting thicker & pushing us all closer together.
in town in your pyjama’s
you sniffed flowers like a queen but
had to hurry away when the florist came
to ask you if you needed any help
on the way home you waved
politely at the cars that were
getting in your way.
to andy
when the calf died his mum stood on the
edge of the hill & went moo &
moo & moo, so we shut all
the windows.
im just thinking about you because i
remember when the cat was put down
and you carried him in a box.
if you were here today, you would be
laughing and that would be okay,
it wouldn’t just be me looking at the
trees sleeping in the distance, and
pretending that i cared about the calf
when i wouldn’t have even noticed
he went missing.
