London

Liquid boundary between timeless sleep and sharp reality. She seeps sleeps slips in through the cracks. Couples seek out the dark, deserted corners of her memories where they kiss unseen.

Sky painted heavy with lead and gunmetal, solid cloud eddying the breeze which passes across them. Leaving her is strange and reluctant. As the distance grows the connection pulls at my bones, vertebrae popping out from under taut skin.

Passage

Short breaths caught in her lungs as the bus pulled away from the station. She'd missed it. With a curse she dropped her heavy suitcase to the floor, and seemingly in slow motion watched the latch hit the kerb and catapult across the road. A hairdryer, underwear, lipstick, European currency spilled onto the hot tarmac of the forecourt. She sat on the case and let herself cry a little, tears mingling with sweat on her face.

Passers-by watched as she collected her belongings and hauled them to the plastic benches by the ticket booth. She took out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. As smoke congealed in the still air and dust she sighed, and it seemed to deflate her. Hair hung over her face, the glow of the cigarette end barely visible. Her high heels dangled from her feet showing the blisters underneath. She sat there for a time and then slowly, as if she had melted to the chair, she pulled herself upright.

Passage

She decides to begin this journey nameless, and then ponders the difference between being nameless and anonymous. She sticks with nameless because she wants to be remembered.
At the moment she's occupying an aisle seat on a cross country train, impatiently. Delays, language barriers, lost tickets and thieves. It all sets her on edge. She has no suitcase but a huge handbag filled to bursting. Not necessarily easier or more convenient, she decides it's a challenge.
Besides, she likes presenting a puzzle to the other inhabitants of the carriage. Sitting on a rush-hour train with her long hair loose and messy, her long legs tucked neatly under the seat, almost hiding her bright silver sandals and tanned toes. She likes to think they will wonder where she is going, or why. She has a cocktail dress but no makeup on, wide eyes and no tinny headphones to hide between.
To pass time she flirts with a shy-looking office clerk, blowing a kiss to the girl as she leaves the train in the suburbs. A little later, a man with a guitar case sits next to her and strikes up conversation. He's a musician. He thinks she is beautiful, he wonders if he could write a song for her. Not right here, she hopes. Play me something nobody else here will recognise, she says. Play me your favourite. So he does, right there in the carriage, and she doesn't know the song. She watches his face as he sings and decides that he is beautiful.

Passage

Unexpectedly her forehead touches the window as the train lurches sideways. A single bead of sweat remains on the glass, true to the sticky heat and apprehension.
The train must be moving at walking pace, so slow to gather speed. She wills it to gather speed. A child's face at the window of a house, a run-down play park, young mothers with cigarettes, newsagents, hedgerows, dogs, sun. Finally blurred together, the landscape is safe to watch. Unsettled without knowing why, she scratches the skin of her thighs with her fingernails. Wonders if opening a window will help in the slightest.

Get a girlfriend

Blonde, thin, delicate somehow. Met early on, at a gig where we reminisced. And though she was charming and her hair was soft I knew she was only being polite.
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I stared discreetly for weeks until we were thrown together. Loud, dirty jokes and barked laughter. I wanted her with an immediacy that I dream of.
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Propositioned, almost. Comparing outfits, the joy of halloween. She's a pirate wench, laughs at my jokes and orders rum. She's a mess and I know it, but as usual I can't keep away.
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Not pretty, but statuesque. More intimidating than I've been known to pursue. When I got closer I realised it's only herself she's scared of.
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She knows about my bruises, my vices and downfalls, my ever-changing faults. We are similar, and damaged in different ways. We drink together now.

passage

"I kiss her tenderly on the forehead. Gently I unlock her arms. The others are going to take her again. I can't bear seeing that. I must go. I must run. For a full minute, however, I stand and look at her. Her eyes seem to have grown enormous. Two great round eyes, full and black as the night, staring at me uncomprehendingly. No maniac can look that way. No idiot can look that way. Only an angel or a saint."
Henry Miller, Black Spring


"The sea smelled like a sail whose billows had caught up water, salt and a cold sun. It had a simple smell, the sea, but at the same time it smelled immense and unique... Nothing pleased him more than the image of himself high up in the crow's nest of the foremost mast of a ship, gliding on through the endless smell of the sea - which really was no smell, but a breath, an exhalation of a breath, the end of all smells - dissolving with pleasure in that breath."
Patrick Suskind, Perfume


"She pulled her by the hands and her feet crashed to the floor. Pam stood up, the shock of her feet transmitted to her blank eyes, and pushing her upstairs in front of her, Sidonie rested her fist in the small of the back she had not touched for so long. She slammed the kitchen door and pulled her into her arms and kissed her hard on the mouth, pressing her against herself until she heard her shoulders crack. Then the woman she had been going to kill, for whom her hand groped towards the knife-and-fork drawer, began to kiss her back, and this time tears fell from her eyes and poured down her face in a stream of incoherence and lipstick... She tried to kid herself she would love her forever."
Shena Mackay, Music Upstairs