one hundred : write when it strikes (it won’t strike twice)
take out that pen
put it to use
that one
two
eight thousand word work of art
(if it even starts)
won’t write itself
it might live
as a bud in the mind
for years
but every rise and set
is back burning
a forest of poetry reduced to ash
floating
you can try
again
and again
to bring it back
the way it was
write it in a year
plant each new word
a seed
to grow a new forest
still green
wide
dense
alive
but different
no names carved deep
no path to the river
it’s the same story
with no soul
fifty-four : dark shines
The change in road surface is audible as she takes the off ramp to the airport. Cold air blows in through the vents, though she is certain she closed them, and she wonders why his hand isn’t in its usual place, resting on her knee. She glances at him from the corner of her eye and adjusts her grip on the steering wheel. He is staring out the window.
At the airport, she opens the back door as he lifts out the luggage. She walks beside him through the terminal, suddenly aware of the finality of the word. She shakes it off. At the news stand he turns to her and asks if she has any change. They are the second last words she hears from him. The last are a few minutes later. A simple bye. No words to suggest he is coming back, though on the drive over she felt sure of that anyway. She didn’t know what she was expecting. Not an admission, of course not, but something. He gives her nothing. Not even a kiss. He walks away, through the gates, away.
By the time his plane takes off, she is sitting back in the drivers seat. Music blares, drowning out the sounds of traffic and aircraft but not of her thoughts.
Tonight I wrote while being painfully aware of the fact that I need to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning, and listening to my favourite Muse album, Origin of Symmetry. I would write more, but as I said, early day tomorrow. Oh, how I look forward to the day when I no longer have to have a day job. A girl can dream.
forty-eight : other peoples lives
In the morning I drive. I slip by houses in the cool grey light that comes after dawn, past the gardens and letterboxes and slow-moving cats that slink through fences and under parked cars. The radio talks to me, wakes me up. When I pull into a parking space, the roof lot is almost empty. The thud of my door closing echoes out to the edges of the building, then drops off into nothing.
I nod at the morning guard through the glass doors. He is asleep on his feet as he pushes the release button, and the doors open with a faint breath of air. The empty mall takes every small sound and magnifies it. The creak of the escalators, the rattling keys in my bag, the click of my heels. I try walk in time to the song in my head, keeping the beat until I stoop to unlock the shop door. The rollers stick and grind, and the sound is piercing when I push the door up, then duck underneath and lower it behind me.
The store always smells of warm paper in the morning. I walk past the frames, the touchscreens, the scrapbooks, and into the lab. The printer blinks. I flick a switch on the processor as I walk to the back room, and it lets out a long, sustained beep. I go through the motions of the morning. I turn on the screens, count the cash, test the chemistry. A stack of unfinished editing work sits in a pile by the computer, and I get started on the most difficult ones first.
An hour later, when I finally switch on the main lights and open the doors, people and pictures flood in. All day I wade through their memories, their lives.
I caught it myself. How’s that for a sunset? I met him in Germany. What’s this black dot? Don’t they look real?! Here’s my baby granddaughter, isn’t she sweet? It was such a good show! The coral was incredible. I didn’t know that was on here. Look at his costume! I wonder when this was… The colour is different. Oh, its great, have you been? Why is it blurry? God, I was so drunk. The cruise took us everywhere. Just look at those flowers! It was too far away. Isn’t that a great one! Wasn’t she stunning. Oh, I forgot about that! Can you make it lighter? Darker? More contrast? Sharper? Can you see into my head and know exactly how this looked, in real life, three weeks ago, and then make it look just like that?
By the end of the day, my head is filled with so many images I barely know which are my own and which are customers. The doors close, the computer powers down, the negatives hang on the rack, the pictures sit in their alphabetical drawers. I count the cash. I finish what work I can. I lock up.
Out on the roof, my car sits on its own. Hot air filters out when I open the door, and I sit with the window open for a few minutes before I start my drive home. My phone buzzes across the passenger seat. I ignore it. I’ve lived other peoples lives all day. All I want is sleep.
This was my life for a while there. Working as a photo lab operator and editor had its perks, but it was also very draining. Nearly every person who I spoke to each day was in a heightened state. Why? Well, think about the times that most people get photos printed. When someone is born, when someone dies, when someone is leaving, when someone is coming home, when they get married, when they are pregnant, whenever something big and important is happening in their lives they want to preserve it. Whats more, they want to tell you all about it. So, as a photo lab operator, I listened to a thousand stories every day. A lot of the time, I got home so tired I had no energy left to live my own life. And so it goes.
forty-five : i’ll be brave
Her footsteps echo in the empty street. Beside her, he walks silently. Now and then she glances at him to make sure he hasn’t stopped or turned down an alley. Each time, he looks back at her, and his expression tells her nothing. She thinks, Well, he’s here isn’t he?
They walk on and on, passing through streetlight beams that throw their shadows like ghosts on the pavement. She looks up at him again, trying to think of something to say. Instead she is distracted by the expression she still can’t read. After a while he asks her a question, but it’s nothing she is ready to answer.
‘What are you thinking?’
Her mouth curves up at the edges and she bites down on her lip, trying to disguise the involuntary smile as she turns away.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ he sounds amused, and she wonders why she doesn’t just tell him, I’m thinking about how much I want you.
‘Mm.’
She glances back in the half-light, at his eyes, lips, fingertips. Contact seems impossible. Her hands ache to reach out, to try, to touch. She fights it. Be brave, she thinks. Do something. She is still thinking it when they get to the car. When she starts the engine. When they drive through the city. When they stop at traffic lights. When he is climbing out of the passenger seat and saying goodbye. When he closes the door, her heart is in her throat. She drives home with the stereo blaring, hating herself for being so afraid.
Later, she lays in her bed and stares at the ceiling, her stomach in knots. Next time, she thinks, I’ll be brave next time.
Tonights piece was written while listening to Radiohead. I may or may not have drawn on my own crippling shyness to write this, though the story is fictitious. Sorry to have to backdate, but as you probably noticed, tumblr was down for maintenance for a few hours tonight.
thirty-five : iris
Iris is burning up. She stands before the bathroom mirror, staring at her reflection and swaying slightly. Red specks slowly spread over her chest and up her neck. She presses her palm to her forehead and it comes away damp and clammy. She undresses and steps into the shower, shaking. The water it hot but feels like ice needles. She feels nausea rising. The phone rings. She leans agains the shower screen. Her hand makes lines in the steam. The phone rings. The room sways. The phone rings. She closes her eyes and swallows hard. The phone rings. She falls.
I’m so tired tonight. I think you can probably tell. Sorry :(
thirty-four : dream in four dimensions
and one morning you wake in a dream. you know it can’t be real, because it’s too real—like you’ve lifted up the edges of the world to see the fourth dimension. but part of you believes. the part that asks a constant stream of why? and how? and what? is silenced, and you hold your hand up in the morning light. your eyes are bright. they follow the contours of your fingers, the loops and whorls of your fingertips, the bump of your knuckles, the still-healing papercut on your index finger. you see every line, every pore, every scar. you see through them, you can see for miles. you feel separate from yourself.
i don’t quite know where i’m going with this. it’s getting a little too trippy for a tuesday. i need to drink a lot more absinthe than i have left if i want to keep writing tonights piece. but, i have to get up early (apparently six has an a.m. now?) so i’m going to call it a night… and thanks again for reading! hopefully my new dayjob wont have too much of an effect on my writing.
thirty-three : know
Dogs whine and pace, pawing at doors. They shift between low-throated growls and high-pitched cries that wake half the neighbourhood. A man rolls over in his bed and exhales, then sits bolt upright at the sight of someone in the doorway. His daughter.
‘Jesus, Molly. You scared the hell out of me,’ he blinks a few times and rubs the sleep from his eyes. Molly stands still in the doorway. ’What’s the matter?’
‘I’m dizzy.’
‘Do you need a glass of water?’
Molly nods. The motion makes her stagger back, and as she stumbles the house moves with her. The floorboards lurch. Her shoulders rise. Cracks run up the walls in slow motion. Cracks run through her knuckles. Plaster dust rains down and coats her hair in white. Before the roof caves in, she lets out a howl.
thirty-one : the day after halloween
When the phone rang I was on the couch, watching The Simpsons. It was the one where Lisa went on a date with Nelson. Lisa said Nuke the whales? and Mum came to the lounge-room door with the kitchen phone in her hand. I looked up and saw her face. I hit mute.
‘That was Gary. John’s… Dad had an accident at work.’ She stopped, lost. I immediately thought the worst, and she shook her head as if I had spoken out loud.
‘He’s at the Alfred. I have to call them.’
The connection between my brain and my mouth didn’t seem to be working. I just nodded, stood up and turned off the TV. Mum went back to the kitchen and I heard her pulling out the phone book. Loud music echoed through the house, and I remembered that Matt was on the computer. I walked into the spare room without much idea of what I was going to say.
‘Matt?’ I stopped halfway through the door and he turned around to look at me, ‘Dad’s in hospital. Something happened at work.’
After that, everything blurred. I was in my room, putting socks on. I ran downstairs. I sat in the back of the car. Mum sped down Hoddle Street. Kylie Minogue was on the radio. Matt was asking Mum questions that she didn’t have the answers to. In the waiting room. Matt sat. Mum paced. I watched the swinging door of Emergency. Eventually someone led us in. There was a smell like burnt bacon and disinfectant and moisturiser. They took us past curtained beds, and pointed to a mass of bandages. A doctor spoke to us. Inhalation burns, swelling. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. His face was covered with bandages. Severe complications. Tubes ran from his nose and his arm. Critical. A machine pumped air into his lungs. Possibly perform a tracheotomy. It hissed.
todays piece is not so much fiction as it is my memory of what happened in 2004 when my dad had a bad accident at work. he is an electrician, and he had been working on a switchboard. someone turned the power back on, the wrong wires touched, and the whole thing exploded. he had 2nd degree burns on his hands, forearms, chest, neck and face, and was drifting in and out of consciousness in the ICU for just over a month.
twenty-nine : like the world is ending
they scream, with a love and ache and ecstasy that they both feel, something greater than themselves. a shared mind. they move together, mouths and hands and hips converging. they sense something. something is different. they feel it, until there, in the dark, they shatter and break and dissipate like stardust.
i promised something good for today. sorry i didn’t deliver. i’m having birthday blues, so i tried to perk up by writing about a little bit of naughtiness… but reading it back, it seems like a description of desperate, despairing, end-of-the-world sex. which isn’t what i was intending. i need more sleep. will try again to write something decent tomorrow.
twenty-eight : peaches
Kids yell from the trees. Some swing, holding tightly to rough branches, while others crouch, hidden among the leaves. Theo hurries past them, but it’s too late.
Ughhhh I can’t write. I’m hanging out with Ben and Cory tonight, and it’s difficult to concentrate on writing when your friends are busy being hilarious. I will write something extra shiny tomorrow to make up for all the crappy posts this week. :(
twenty-seven : time and impatience
she watches light refractions in her vodka and raspberry
and is happy she chose it
instead of a screwdriver-
the color changes in the shifting light
and a tiny show carries on
in her hi-ball glass, balanced on her knee.
a new letter j sits at her feet,
and she wonders if this is the one they spoke of.
because when she twisted the apple,
around
and around in her hand,
the stem snapped sharp, between i and k.
in the years since then, there have been other letters,
but none that would fit.
her sentence will never be complete until that last letter falls into place.
This isn’t new. I wrote this a few years ago, and found it while looking through my redbubble page. Isn’t it sad that I can’t remember who that letter J was that I was talking about? Oh well. I’ll write my real daily piece later this afternoon or evening. :)
twenty-six : because it aches
it was in the shadows of his eyes that she felt it. in the crack of light under the door. the gap between his lips when he concentrated. the sound of stairs creaking. the cool kiss of water from a dusty glass. in the spaces, the things she sensed but were never said. she knew the word for what she felt, but not the reason. words came easy. easier than the feelings that necessitated them by far, but the reason—that was evasive.
she started leaving him letters. notes. poems. she wrote them in code. spelled out in stones she picked from the stairs. if i love you, will you tell me how to leave? she knew the answer, and though she craved the sun and the thrill of grass between her toes, she didn’t think she would leave even if he let her. she was safe.
today i wrote while listening to stockholm syndrome by muse. very literal take on the title. i’m still feeling the weight of a metric ton of writers blocks, and these posts are suffering. hopefully it’ll pass soon.
twenty-three : you won’t get hurt
it runs through me like a sustained piano key, and i’m sure you can feel it. the sound comes in waves. you look at me, and for a second i think it may be meaningful, then that it is a random glance as you think of other things. two seconds. i must barely register as a person in your eyes. time passes, and the sound gets louder, more complex. i make no sudden movements. you still face me. it’s a chord now. i don’t get my hopes up. a c chord. i listen. i know something has to give, but you give no signs of an overture. my feet are leaden from lack of use, but i move towards you with baby steps. you won’t get hurt. i think it again and again. you won’t get hurt. it’s all i can do. every second lasts longer than the one preceding it. you’re going to turn away. don’t turn away.
tonights inspirado was a song by gotye, called ‘hearts a mess’. sorry to have to backdate this one; i was out to dinner with a friend (at a great restaurant in melbourne called gingerboy) and wasn’t planning on getting home so late.
twenty-two : the edge of all our fears
He left the same way he arrived. Without a name. Without a hope, without shoes on his feet or a shirt on his back. This town was small, but even they were too busy with life to notice him, the stranger, slipping quietly through their open porch doors and taking what he needed. The things they kept hidden safely under floorboards, locked in their hearts. Their secrets, their fears. He stood unseen in bright kitchens and living rooms and bedrooms, watching their faces as they spoke, and drinking in the parts of them they never knew they had.
Now, with a full mind, he walks under powerlines. The moon is divided. Its light falls on his face in lines, cut into pieces by the wires overhead. The steady pulse of electricity aches in his veins, and he listens to the nightbirds call. Occasionally, he hears his own name sung out in jarring soprano. The birds swoop around him. He ducks and stumbles, stones dig into the soles of his feet and he swears out loud as they pierce the skin. He digs the stones out and throws them far into the darkness. The road ahead is an endless black shadow on the desert. It stretches out, the distance too far to fathom. He wants to rest. He doesn’t.
I wrote todays piece while listening to Exogenesis: Symphony Part 2 (Cross-Pollination) by Muse. Don’t be surprised if I use more than one Muse song this week. They are who I listen to 90% of the time that I write anything, so it is inevitable.
twenty-one : this boy’s in love
It’s dusk, and Alice is on the roof again. I see her from my window, sitting with her back against the chimney, trying to light a cigarette. With each failed attempt, she crinkles her nose and mutters something that looks like Dammit. It takes six tries. When it finally glows, she shoves the lighter into a crack on the side of the chimney and stretches out her legs, gleaming gold in the sunset. The breeze tangles her dark hair, and she looks to the sky as she exhales. Smoke twists like taffy. She takes her time. It gets darker, and soon all I can see is a bright orange dot rising to where her mouth must be. Someone calls her from the house, and I see her outline as she scrambles to her feet, pressing the stub against the brick of the chimney. A few seconds later, her feet dangle from the edge of the roof, and she climbs hurriedly in through her open bedroom window. When she turns to close it, she sees me watching her. She smiles. I exist.
a note; for the next week, i’m going to use songs as inspiration for my writing. i don’t plan to use every aspect of the song, but i think it will help to have some idea of what i’m writing about before i start.
todays piece was inspired by this boy’s in love by the presets. enjoy! :)
