18.

For Dramaqueen.

Sweetsour, tart on her tongue. Like memories long gone, good riddance, suddenly remembered like a half-forgotten dream. The lingering of candlesmoke, the scent of old perfume, a lipstick smudge on tissue paper.

Skittles. The word smiles back at her like a childhood drawing. Crayoncoloured, paintsmudged. Lying warm in her hands, before she lets it slip, like her innocence, like a broken promise, through her fingers.

Bright bursts of colour, she watches them dance across the street.

17.

Snapshot, a split second when she turned around, her hair a whirl around her shoulders, eyes closed, lashes flickering, her brows in a sharp arch where she was caught in surprise, where the flash lit her face, made her glow.

16.

She decides that one day, she's going to look through all the dictionaries she can find, and if the word Love is defined, she doesn't give a damn what the definition is, she'll call up the author (or whatever they're called) of that dictionary, and tell him that he's a fucking liar.

15.

She keeps telling herself the same thing.

Let go, let go, let go, let

Go.

14.

She borrows romance novels from the library just to laugh at the hopeless protagonists.

Idiots.

13v.

She blinks, palepink morning kissing her cheeks.

She catches the soft sparkle between her fingers.

Curling, reaching, dancing in the light.

13iv.

Invisible dreams.

She reaches out to touch them, to caress them, to trap them in butterfly nets.

Disappearing without a trace.

4.16 AM.

13iii.

The world flickers beneath her eyelids.

A flutter of neon pinkpurpleblueyelloworangegreen in the shadows.

Unreal.

3.01 AM.

13ii.

She can hear her heartbeat.

Loud, clear in the wordless, soundless, noiselessness.

th-
ump.

She could have drowned in it.

2.11 AM

13i.

The silence engulfs her.

In midnight black, she watches bright, neongreen numbers. Flashing.

One, Two, Three.

1.09 AM.

12.

Tendrils of darkness curl around her throat.

Colour me black, black, black.

The voices, they whisper in her ear, forgotten mumbles and murmurs, nightmares buried in old fears, goodbye, goodbye, this was never meant to last. They're real but they do not exist, they drown in clouds of forgotten dreams.

She stumbles off the edge of cold, cold glass (the fragments cut her rosebud fingers), falling, the stark silence of nothings and nobodies strangling her, with only a sea of tears to catch her, to embrace her, to destroy her.


She wakes up gasping, drowning in white sheets.

11.

She's afraid of opening her eyes.

The darkness is blinding.

10ii.

She reaches out to touch intangibility.

There's nothing left.

10i.

She lies awake in the darkness, and wonders why she left.

9.

For Natalie.

She doesn't believe in flowers.

Beautiful but useless. White petals, crushed between her fingers.

8.

She ends up throwing her phone over the bridge.

It's poetic, non-conformist, and hurts less than waiting for a call that will never come.

7.

Classical. Jazz. Rock. Hip-hop. R&B. Pop. Oldies. Easy-listening. Talkshow. Laughter. Voices. White noise.

She switches off the radio and dances to the Silence.

6ii.

She's afraid of fading.

And erasers.

(Grey smudges, they disappear with time.)

6i.

She never writes in pencil.

They're tentative, hesitant and temporary.

5v.

Without wind, it probably wouldn't look as poetic anyway.

No broken words to flutter by.

5iv.

She contemplates throwing the ink-stained remnants out the window.

But there isn't so much a hint of a breeze.

(A wisp, an invisible caress.)

5iii.

"I-"

She tears the letter up.

The bastard would never read it anyway.

5ii.

"I am not-"

She tears it into shreds and uses a different pen.

5i.

"I am not a perfectionist."

She pauses, fullstopped, pentip on paper. She glances at her handwriting, cursived. Brushing words.

It looks strange to her.

She tears the letter up and starts on an empty sheet.

White. Wordless.

4.

She writes poetry on Cafe serviettes.

They tear beneath her pen, so she throws them away.

3.

Three am in the morning, she's been drinking red wine and champagne.

She raises her glass to a stranger, because she can never bear to celebrate herself.

2ii.

An umbrella. Gucci, black, silver, seventy-five dollars.

Crushed. Tattered beneath the tyres of a frantic street.

2i.

She stands on the sidewalk where the pavements meet.

Facing greywhite sky, she parts her lips to taste the rain.

1.

The world is unreal.

Or perhaps her dreams are too lucid.