and so i fall,
i don't wanna feel this small
you know i just can't handle this
handle this at all
and wonder when i fall
i have cracked lips and i'd like you to kiss them. it's a stupid thought to believe that you could kiss this all away, and escape is tempting, too tempting. And the lights are turned right down,
how can you ask for me to stay when all you ever do is go
just go.
And so I fall.
purpled walls, i think? The ceilings are high and warm, all old personal but it isn't yours. It looks like the perfect stage and i think thats what it is. And for these few months the world doesn't have to exist past these walls not quite keeping you in, keeping you safe, and i'm sleeping in your living room, we don't have much room to live. no eating, no, expensive, and you don't need to eat, who needs to eat when it's the beginning of love. i don't remember who said that. standing in her/my underwear, and all this drinking, this attempt at escape, it didn't get us anywhere, did it? we didn't eat, our teeth ached, our gums bled, you began to see through my skin, and we started to waste away. when we ran around, when you chased me through the little corridors crashing all over the place, it was after we'd drunk the sherry i think, although we hated it. the firelight was licking the walls, and we woke up the next bluish morning, stinging cold with corresponding bluish, purpleish legs. I had bruises on my back too. That made me happy. Because we spent so much time on the once-polished parquet floors, except the rooms that are covered in dust now, caked over thick but our footprints somewhere. I remember when we spent those hours in the bath, our skin fresh, hot pink and almost raw. drew pictures in the steam and curled up somewhere in the linen cupboard, stretched out like a cat around the boiler almost blood boiling, and for once i wasn't cold. did you think once, of inviting someone else in? i did, but other people have other ideas and to explain is too much effort, to risk being exposed to something brutal of real life, too harsh and a fresh air in our stale minds and ambitions is too dangerous. when we took those thick, black markers, that made us dizzy. when i came round, after i'd passed out, you'd already covered half of the wall. thick, curling, lurid writing, you almost scratched it into the wall, your poetry i suppose it was, writing to me. i wanted to record it all, to write down you, i wanted you to be remembered forever, but i couldn't seem to get the words out. it used to choke me, i thought it was that which made me choke, it was when we tried to eat again, it was difficult. and i watched you throw up, i folded my arms, we never did wear enough clothes, it was cold. because i still thought you were beautiful. i reminded me of the beginning, when i watched you smoke, because i wanted the world to see you the way i did, i wanted to see the smoke curling round your lips and the burns on your arms, little marks, little ridges. because we've always taken it all so seriously, this business of being mad. yet we spent our lives for those months doing nothing at all. after a few days the room was covered in writing, it was everything about us, and you were drawn in thousands of these little words everywhere. and we collapsed on the floor, there was nothing there - save those embroidered covers, that we hid in when the milkman banged on the door. he stopped bringing our milk then, then what would you do? in our early hours we stuck our legs out of the window, we had our 'going out' coats for when we stepped outside. we destroyed the dining room table a little after we shut up shop for the world, we took everything off and we smashed it up, took it out to the garden - it seems odd not to be afraid of the outside then - and burnt it, why i don't know. tried to catch the sparks, dance around it like something pagan, and fell asleep outside, it wasn't as romantic as it was supposed to be, the stars disappeared, they didn't spell out a thing. there were apples dripping off the trees, and for once we were grateful. we came inside that night and woke up in the red room, and it was there that you first began to appreciate the ridges of my bones, the skin stretched thinner, and i played on the piano. we played in the middle of the night, while you stretched yourself across the carpet, digging your fingers in. there was nothing else, not even outside, no competition, no distractions, nothing else, just fabric and imagination. i remember one morning, a sharp midnight morning where time slowed down, where we sat outside, outside again!, with our feet in a puddle, while the petrol patterns swirled at our feet, we played with matches back inside, we sound like little children, you wanted to burn your feet, you were sinister sometimes, you picked me up and i enjoyed feeling like you could break me. but we didn't have to really compete for power over each other, perhaps that is what was nicest. i remember when we turned on every speaker in the house, before the electricity went, at least, when we painted the entire downstairs blue, or as much as we could, sometimes nothing seems stupid when you're a kid. and when i made you stand in the bath, so everything was clean again. i remember when you left me dripping with whisky and i couldn't remember why you'd walked out. but i left lots of broken glass all over the place, you weren't afraid to lick up the blood i left behind either, when you got back. because beauty didn't quite have to be beautiful then. i was angry at you then, because you wanted to leave, leave me and everything that we'd built up, that in truth didn't exist. it was suffocating and it was stale, it was addictive though, and it kept me tied to it. i left you messages in lipstick on the bathroom mirror, after it'd been steamed up, and you replied on all the reflective surfaces we could find. we didn't have to talk to anyone else, and that was okay. we wrote, on everything, caked lipstick flaked off the mirrors eventually, just like caked blood flaked off our skin eventually. there were all those song lyrics that we lived through because we weren't living ourselves, there are still some scratched into the piano. into our secret places, because we knew that eventually this all had to end. so, some days i go to these little places, because i can still stroke my fingers over the words. like all the words you used to say when we'd dance to those records we found somewhere. feeling like an actual, real, living couple, and stepping into someone else's life, my cheek stuck to yours with our gluey sweat and all those old musty fabrics soaking through, i felt so drained, being with you drains everything out of me. at the same time it makes everything bubble over. nothing is ever quiet or simple, not unless we're alone, and we were. i absolutely drowned in everything about you. life was nothing if it wasn't surreal. i don't know why this failed like it did. it means that you can't really suspend reality. but we did. we did, a little.
still imperfect
i was so close.
Feeling:
Listening to:
Pretending: