not quite wonderland

Some days turn upside down. A click of a button and the colours are inversed. Silky things tear at your skin, while you sink into concrete with a welcome sigh. The tame bear teeth and claws you never noticed before. While the wild draw close to your lighted window - dressed in tophat and tails and ready to read a bedtime story. Clouds slide behind the sun and shadows arrive at sunset. Words write themselves into knotty ropes while conversations are exhaled to form a stagnant layer that hangs just below the ceiling. Hands where you used to have feet - you kick me when you wave goodbye.

we all fall down

They say you should write about what you know. I don’t know much, hence recent posts on blue glass, paper people and lost gloves. But this week inspiration took a turn for the worse and left me struggling under the weight of a common cold.

I’m under a spell cast by a cartoon wizard - my bones have turned to rubber. I wobble and bounce from moment to moment - none having much impact on me and vice versa.

It’s wrong to have a cold in the summer. The clue is in the name. I need to feel the risk of freezing. I need to laid my burning forehead against frosty surfaces. I need to feel as if I have been cryogenically suspended for a few days, and that when I thaw it might be spring.

Familiar foods have changed and grown corners. Even the roundest mouthful has edges and sharps that I never saw before, all eager to tear my throat on the way down.

My eyes water when there’s nothing to be sad about while my nose is filled with pepper tipped pins. And so I sneeze. And sneeze. And each time I do, I swear I lose precious thoughts. Words and phrases lost forever to high powered exhalation.

haiga #2

true blue

Boiling water. Your surprise. The way the glass shattered. The way it muttered out a couple of cracked cries before it gave up two blue tears. Sharp edged apologies that it couldn’t hold itself together for us any longer.

You know I have a thing about blue glass. Or I should amend that to had a thing about blue glass. I think my passion is fading. Individual pieces have broken and fallen by the way and those that remain on the mantel-piece are gathering more than their share of dust.

I’ve never liked rose-tinted glass, never needed that optimistic sheen spread across my world. But a world viewed through blue is a world that makes a little more sense. Every place a step closer to water, to where we came from.

But I realise that you cant just live a life of curious curves and keep me on a high shelf for special occasions. And the things you hold most tightly to are always the last, but most likely, to break.