'Are you hunting for whatsapps upon the floor,
Or pings upon the stairs?
Worried that the beeps and cheeps and rings
Were muffled by the carpet hairs?
Is your inbox overflowing (yet empty)?
Your face in a glassy stare?
Are you searching for signs of love forgot
And finding ones that didn't care?'

Oyster Card

I remember the London buses
Like cheap postcards, fridge magnets and plastic models
—Pillarbox red and memorabilious.
I remember, on our free day off
From our carefully-chosen tour package
—Most places–least cost–'local' food—
we took a Red Bus tour.

I remember my father fumbling
with coins from that all-important belly-bag.
I remember the people behind us in queue
With blank faces. I remember
the shame—I could do this faster. I
don't remember the guilt that it was
His savings he was counting out, reduced to coins
And each one strange and precious.

I remember sitting upstairs in the drizzle,
Droplets obscuring the panes of the half-roof;
We still keep photographs of a glassy, dim London and
The freezing thrill of leaving
Our tourist dog-collars behind
at Trafalgar Square bus stop.

cravings

A soft ringing: the phone, somewhere under the blanket. Forget it. 

Ten minutes later, it rings again. She squirms, finds it grazing her thigh, shyly vibrating. 

It’s him, both him. It falls silent as she looks at it, thankfully. 

He hasn’t called in days; she has sallied forth every day 

Dressed to meet him by accident. She sees in him

Past lovers, her pattern. She feels she knows him,

Two brief conversations to the contrary failing to withstand. 

This will be all of them gone right. 

Or… at least she knows what she's getting into.

Or who.

But this afternoon, with the warm sunlight trapped in her doubly reinforced windows;

The wind of a carefree rebuff in her sails, making the leaves and shadows jump; 

The warmth of her intense body sliding against soft sheets

And the drowsiness after; the phone knows it doesn’t need answering.

There’s no call to arms more potent; 

Sweat shining, her depths in paroxysms

Of laughter.

The sink got clogged today. I airily said I would take care of it,
waved a nonchalant hand at my mother and spared her retches.
'No of course I won't lose my appetite.'

After breakfast, I returned with the plunger
But it only made little sucking noises and water slop-spurted out
from the little slit under the tap
Like the sink vomiting on me. At me.
Little things were floating around in the water,
not disgusting but ghosts of things disgusting.
I prodded deeper in the pipe with a straightened-out clotheshanger,
And roused greenish-black memories that drifted eerily in the clean water,
Returning to haunt those who had no concern for the plumber.

Pleasure provokes description; pain, analysis. 
Perhaps because I cannot explain why a thing was beautiful, 
or how it hurt.

A day without you

A day without you is not a good thing.
Nothing so romantic as not being able to breathe.
Turning blue. Choking. Being put on ventilator.
Nothing like that.
It's not starvation. Not like going without lunch
And then wondering why the world looks bloody black.
Why its hard to work, why people I usually like seem infuriating,
Why I'm treating the empty boxes in the kitchen cupboard
As though they stone-pelted my dog.
No, not like that.
It's not hunger in other parts, either. I know how to deal with that by now.

On a day without you, I don't feel inclined to
hang a white flag in my window. The sky doesn't pour tears.
It doesn't feel clammy in my favourite ruined shoes,
I don't shiver with a premonition of pneumonia.
On such a day I don't viciously click through Photos of You,
looking for Her face. I don't expect to find tokens of phantom lovers
While sniffing for you on your cast-aside clothing.
(Your nicer clothing, of course.
Your socks smell of you, but not in a way I want to remember.)

A day without you is not a day spent missing you.
A day without you is only a day at the end of which
I'll wish I could tell you about it—you'd
understand this day better than anyone else I could tell.

I shall practice self-development.

"I've really wanted to read this!" I say, and pick it up.
She says I can have it. I pick it up, reluctantly.

I remember to take it home. Two hours later,
When I'm ready to read, (casting aside all its predecessors)
I proceed to begin. (Skip author's note and, hm, preface)
Midway through the first page, I half-giggle,
and so I pause and think, the writing's quite wry.
In five pages' time, I stop to consider a twist in the tale.
Oh! This is a book which cares about holding my attention!
A chapter later, I have checked my phone again, and
told myself to call my parents in ten minutes.
In five, I recall calls I have not made,
WhatsApp buzzes to life, my mind stutters over
A sentence it has not read thrice now...for that matter,
The whole paragraph is looking unfamiliar.
And those calls must be made. Dinner cooked.
Bath taken. I wish someone would read it out to me.
Audiobooks are flat and always in the wrong accent.
I cast a doleful look at the four books I still say I'm reading.
And the newspaper. And work.

And on the inside, this:
This time I imagine as entirely my own is peeling away like dead skin, scattering as dust, deserving to be painful but I haven't the sensitivity.  If each moment were a coin pouring into a vault and I in it, I could suffocate in anticipation. So what if this eight-hour long book will soften several thousand hours to come? Perhaps I will find a summary on the internet. 

Reasons you need a best friend.

1. World falling apart
2. Not getting laid
3. Others putting you through shit
4. That shit is a mess you made.
5. Endless, lonely anxiety
6. Shivering, with no one to ward off the cold
and
7. For a secret never to be told.

Today's Keats has no need of French

(An adaptation of the unfortunately titled La Belle Dame Sans Merci)


I dreamt that you texted me to call you.

I awoke, and you hadn't texted me at all.

The screen is echoing with an absence of texts

And no birds sing.