Those Girls

Those Girls

She’s been that eager girl,
hyper-gabbling to anyone,
buying them extra rounds.
Dancing, squealing too loud.
Euphoric at new inclusion.
She’ll go wherever they go.
Be whoever it is they want.
Grateful. They want her!

She’s been that surly girl,
standing off, a sniff apart.
Taking smiles for smirking
question marks. Inventing
bad intentions. Suspicious
of being liked. She’ll go
wherever it is they want.
Mulish. She won’t like it.

She’s been that envied girl,
the one they want to impress.
Oblivious, giggling and silly.
No idea her smile an assumed
question mark to other girls.
Not thinking she’s a Princess,
desired centre of the universe.
Happy. Thinking of crisps.

Waiting

Waiting

She waits. Grey plastic chair with wobbly leg.
Corridor. Static-y carpet sparks at her soles.
Scratches her nerves from feet up. New shoes.
Not good enough. “It’s all about presentation,”

they’d said. “First impressions are everything.”
Her nails carve into old crescent scars, seeking
comfort in palms slimed sickly by experience.
Last time, last time, every time. Queasiness

of forced down breakfast threatens, rising fast,
no questions asked. Her guts wrestling chance.
Not good enough. Line of sweat knife-drawing
her spine. Acidity in armpits. “First impressions.”

Dumb with mucus, she locks her jaws, clamps
her eyes wide. A door opens a long way down.
Some hair gel wisps a name that could be hers.
Fake flowers and real live fear. Everything blurs.

Juiced

Juiced

Her head is a lemon-squeeze of anxiety.
Her zest grated ‘til her skull bleeds raw.
Soon she will be spitting pips.

This time, it’s not about going too quietly.
Rind glistening – she’s cut ‘til she’s scored.
Soon she will be splitting skin.

There is no end to this scraping sobriety.
No rest. Ice-picks glimmer over-awed.
Soon she will be fitting in.

Her citrus head sugar-dips impropriety.
Listening. Gin-lacing. Acid-mouth bored.
Soon she will be glittered sin.

Either Way

Either Way

Balanced: pulp-head, spine-tense,
hips, thighs and shins, angling knees
and ankles to toe-gripping feet.

Arms tucked and hands cram fists
to pits. Lips bite firm to a straight line.
Blank face. Balance. A challenge

to breathe slow through the nose.
To barely stretch jumpy lungs too close
to snagged surfaces, air and empty skin.

Balance: on the edge. Corduroy sofa
crevasse. Shaking eyes-shut brink.
Fifty-fifty fall either way. Teetering tilt.

Floor to break on cold bruising laminate.
Or worn cushion suffocation, comfort rolled
to a place she would never move from again.

Carpet Roses

Carpet Roses

The seventh step of the stairs,
the corner winding just behind
her back. Her rigid spine.
That’s where she sits.
She waits.
Soaked through.
Coat still on.
Eyes dry.

She’s been sitting there
for a while.
Maybe hours.
Maybe ten minutes.
Maybe all night.
She counts the flowers
in the carpet, traces
new ones with toes numbing
on itchy threads unravelling
and crumbling underlay.

These days she has to
draw them in more and more
from memory. They don’t
wither and rot like real ones:
carpet roses simply
get rubbed out.

It wasn’t always like this.
She bites her tongue,
scuffs in another
repetitive bloom,
adds thorns.

On the seventh tread of
stairs that are never quiet
(apart from these times).
She waits.
Soaked through.
Coat on.
Eyes dry.

Her feet weave a restless
secret garden, growing wilder,
ever more rambling, with each
tick of dawn.
She can do it without
looking down,
without

taking her eyes from
the front door.
The fanlight glass above it
slowly gathers a morning glow,
like hope
she doesn’t feel.
The thorns begin to bite
at her soles.

Smirk Or Smile?

This is for anyone who has ever felt tongue-tied in front of someone they really, really like…

 

Smirk Or Smile?

You’re pithering about, your pride cupped close
over your balls: to hide, to protect, to give up, to
keep out. You’re dithering, dreaming: carving up
each craving. Your blabbermouth wittering cuts

your tongue dead. You feel her looks withering
those careful-constructed witty asides, the ones
that sounded so good in the bathroom’s echo
and splash, addressed to the loofah. She is not

a loofah. Or a sponge. She’s not soaking you up
or soothing your spine. She’s got two ears and
a brain, two legs to walk away. Shoulders to turn
cold to your blithering. Wide mouth to smirk and

eyes to roll in exasperation. And, oh god, your
pits start to squidge with perspiration and you’ve
a sly inkling your breath stinks You need a drink.
Delete this whole conversation. Abort! Abort!

But actually, is she not smirking… but smiling…?

Ways To Say…

Ways To Say…

Could dispatch
a carrier pigeon,
or twit a Tweet,
or S.W.A.L.K.
a snail mail.

Could puff a smoke signal,
or click a Facebook “poke”.
Could tag a photo.
Could flick a virtual

kiss. Could say
something with flowers
or a Gorilla-gram.
Or just thumb

a text.
Short.
Succinct.
Smiling.
To say….

Yes? In the old days
(y’know, Pre-Millennium?)
we used to just
pick up the phone…

(…pulse pounding,
handset slippy in hot palm,
twirling the cord
round nervous fingers,
quick breath echoing
back on the dial tone…)

… just pick up the phone
and call.
If we wanted.

It’s still an option…

Shoes Glued

Shoes Glued

She pictures her shoes glued
to the floor to stop her running.
Her knees twitch for a last ditch
dash through the open door. Her

throat itches for cold night air to
swallow, swallow, swallow down.
And the drink in her lock-gripped
fist: lift to, fall from, her clockwork

goldfish gob, sip don’t gulp like a
fucking guppy. Visualisation and
double vodka, maybe a few pretty
pills pulping down in her tummy.

Anything to get her up, out and
cut her clean from self-doubt’s
wallowing. Her stuck pig’s snout
poking and prodding back down

in her chosen dirt. Her worthless
apathy, hermit’s TV coma state.
Weight of despair and unwashed
hair. The effort it takes to wake

herself, shake herself half-alive,
punch a stake through the lying
mirror’s made-up wrongs. Open
a window, have a shower, dress

up, even if it feels like acting. Like
playing for the biggest impact. Or
the smallest hiding game. In truth
she knows she has as much right

to be there on this Friday night.
The same as anyone else. She
knows she should feel no shame.
She tries, she tries – she steels

her feet in those glued heels and
stares people hard in their eyes.
This frightening girl, insubstantial,
but held fast . No one forgets her.