Beneath the bed was a door. Beneath the door was a stairway. At the end of the stairway was a cavern wider than the world. In the cavern was a silver pool as deep and as old as time. And in the silver pool there was nothing but despair.
Beneath the bed was a door, and we did not dare to open it at all.
__________
Notes:
1. Written on the 28th August, 2022
“It is not a number, Claire!”
“Of course it’s a number. It’s the biggest number! Like a really big 8!”
“It’s a concept, Claire!”
“You’re a concept!”
“Claire doesn’t know what a concept is, Tina.”
“I do. And you’re both concepts!”
“What about me?”
“You’re worse than a concept, Daniel! You’re a notion!”
_________
Notes:
1. Written on December 31st, 2022
There’s an empty bottle of whisky on my desk. It’s been there 10 years now, maybe a little bit more. Longer than the desk, in any case. Longer than any of the furniture in the room.
Johnnie Walker. Red label. Old enough to be measured in fluid ozs and percentage proofs.
I don’t drink whisky and never really have. I don’t drink at all these days. I assume my dad drank all this one and then I kept the bottle for some reason, because it’s nice and old, because it was there, because it gives me something to look at more interesting than the wall.
We got it fifteen, twenty years ago from the cupboards of a neighbour’s house after she’d died and we were helping clean up, this and various other archaic bottles of unopened spirits. I have no idea where they went, or what they were.
Shamefully, I don’t even remember her name. Maybe I never knew it. I used to talk to her in the mornings while waiting for the bus. She was kind of funny. I think she thought I was odd, weird.
I was odd, weird. I still am. It’s too late to change. Some lack I’ll always have.
I don’t know why I keep it, the bottle. But I couldn’t imagine throwing it away. If I’d left the top off it’d be full of dust by now.
Next to it there’s a milk bottle with a feather in it. No memories attach themselves to those.
__________
Notes:
1. Written on the 17th July, 2022
#1: The Spider
scuttling across ceilings
spitting at me
all my splendid children
demand to be free
#2: The Cat
only in sleep
are we truly ourselves
and no one is themself
more often than me
#3: A Crow
you cannot
you will not
ever
scare
me
#4: David
My beard is like a tangled bush
filled with cobwebs
and bees
rotting fruit
and sparrow’s nests
crisp packets, carrier bags
and old coke cans
turned pink over time
by rain
and sun
#5: The Ghost In The Well
I am no longer alive
and you are not yet dead
but give it time
and we’ll be together again
__________
Notes:
1. The Spider was written on May 20th, 2022
2. The Cat was written on June 4th, 2022
3. A Crow was written on January 3rd, 2023
4. David was written on May 10th, 2022
5. The Ghost In The Well was written on November 11th, 2022
I still remember sometimes my friends smoking menthol cigarettes when we were 14 or 15 or so. I don’t know exactly, but round about then. Walking through fields in the dark, sitting on the sea wall, or the swings in the park, the only light the fading glow of the town behind us and the flicker of cigarettes in their mouths, occasional match bursts of flame between cupped palms. Practised movements copied from older brothers, older sisters, older kids, parents, films.
“They make your lungs bleed, you know?”
That’s what I remember. Not who said it, not any discussion of the point, no disputes to its veracity. Just the claim that menthol cigarettes make your lungs bleed.
Not even the smell of the cigarettes remains now, the taste of the menthol, how it affected the smoke. My memories are visual, verbal. Non linear. Patchwork. Collage. Who knows how much of this is true, how many memories its stitched together from, how many lies I’ve told here that I no longer remember are lies.
“They make your lungs bleed, you know?”
Across the river, the nuclear power plant hums in the dark. Sound of boats in the distance, ropes slapping against metal masts in the winds and on the tides.
Sometimes I wonder if they still make menthol cigarettes. Think about buying some in the newsagents to see what the medical warnings might say.
__________
Notes:
1. Written on the 15th July, 2022