all those sweet conspiracies

It seems like I am forever writing sentences that spin around the pivot of one or both of these words.

I write them back to front, upside down, even in a mirror, but they never make sense. One sounds long - a murmur, a rumble, an echo. The other is a soundproof door - closing me out or closing you in - I’m not yet sure which.

Then tonight I notice something new. Something previously hidden within these words. In remember there is ember. In forget there is forge. And so their eternal reliance on each other become clear. The forge where our cast iron tomorrows are wrought - fed by embers, those glowing fragments of dying yesterdays. Words within words should never be ignored.

Knowing this I tie these words to ribbons and let them hang above me while I sleep - an unlikely mobile that permeates my dreams. Everyday I wake up asking - is there something I need to remember, or something I’d best forget?

glowing bronze, steering on

There is one particular road, on the way between here and there. A road I use on the few days when I turn my back on the sea and head inland.

A road where the music in my head comes alive. It trebles in volume, clarity, intensity. It lifts me from the pavement and carries me along. Low to the ground but gliding.

A road of harmonious oppositions. On one side those houses that all look the same. You can hear their shouting from the outside - even with the windows closed. On the other a graveyard. Deep and crisp and even. I don’t feel fear or sadness when I look through the railings - I’ve always felt comfortably alone in a crowded place.


Maybe it’s the lack of traffic. Maybe it’s the size of the trees. But suddenly I see where I am - fifteen odd years on and I am back where I began. I think the trees were smaller then, or maybe I was taller. Before I grew up. I was a little thought, on a little bus, from a big school.

And even then I was wrapped safe within my world of sound, muffled by blankets of necessary noise. And I realise so little has changed. And so much. I glide on, bittersweet in the familiarity of being me.

The proverbs claim - ‘It is not the destination that is important, but the journey there’. I disagree.

random symmetry

I’m walking up a road named after distant royalty. It could be any road - it could be any name, on any day. Any day is any day until you name it today.

When I walk I don’t look ahead - that’s too predictable for me. Sometimes I look behind, but that’s risky, especially on a sunny day or a Sunday. Instead I look down at what’s beneath my feet. You’d be surprised at the things I see.


Today it’s a smattering of puzzle pieces. Bright blue against pavement grey. Abandoned jigsaw logic. All eager protrusions and holes. Begging to be fitted together - to combine into sense amid nonsense. Scattered outside a churchyard - but that’s beside the point.

It means nothing to me. Absurdity amid antipathy. But to someone somewhere this is everything that they search for. Perhaps the missing pieces are those that will complete and reveal them.

Or perhaps, more likely, these are the bits that had to be lost. To leave a window to look through the picture we build up piece upon piece, layer upon layer, day upon day. Now that these pieces are gone - from her frame to mine - she can look through the blue to what lies beneath.

listening to the silences

‘The words stick in my throat.
They gag me and make me choke.
They starve me of all breath
and leave me no strength to name them.’

Or so I said on 21st July 1997. And they have lingered there ineloquently for nine years - until this week, when they start to riot and rumble.

This is their time. Time to chew through the vines of compromise, the seaweeds of politeness that bind them up and tie them down. They sway in unison so the tide rises within and I swallow back against the force of the oceans they crawl from.

They strike up a chorus of protest that echoes and reverberates through my chambers and tubes, and emerges through my lips as a gurgle, a burble a bleat. The time is right. They are ripe. They are free. Spring is in the air and its time to flee the nest that was me.

Sick of huddling in the shady cave at the back of my throat, they run out and dart to the tip of my tongue - taut and primed like a spring board. I am strong, I am high, I am elastic. Take a deep breath - prepare to jump.