Poetry Corner - Blog Posts

Sometimes I think the dreams are either alternate versions of me or another person completely and I'm just hopping along in their life that night.

I had a dream I was a woman working in a book store but this woman was not me. I've had this dream before over a decade ago, same woman, same bookstore. She now has her own office so she's doing well since the last dream, she seemed happy, fulfilled. I woke and felt motivated to do something with my life. Maybe visit a books store, maybe I'd see her in the women checking out books, Maybe I'd one day see myself with my own book adorning the shelfs.

I wonder if she dreams of me, I wonder what she sees. Am I a recurring dream, the Young women that prefers to stay curled up, that never went out with friends and now lives half in a world of pretend. Does she see me lay in bed, lost but searching, waiting but hiding. Am I a nightmare. Does she wake confused and heavy and think thankgod that's not me.

Am I only ever meant to dream of what could have been.

I don't get out bed most days, I barely remember to drink water and my hyper fixations seem to be doing me more harm than good. But I go to get groceries in the late evening hours, as the birds call out to the fading sun. I can't bring myself to go regularly, but I've been in my house for weeks and the birds are singing and the streets are empty and life seems beautiful and fresh when you walk alone just breathing or singing to your self. I walk over the fly over, closer to the branches that reach up and away from here.

I sat outside on a wall across the pub. My dad was inside. I hadn't spoken to him in ten years. But I had seen him through pub windows and passed by him as he smoked in doorways more than a few times. Once I heard him sharply inhale, coughing as cigarette smoke choked him when I passed, but reached out he did not and neither did I.

It was summer, the air was warm and still, the daffodils had fully bloomed. I don't know how long I sat there, but I know it started to get dark and the streets emptied. Someone in the pub put on Sweet Caroline, everyone inside sang it with all the energy of a football chant, I hummed along to the chorus looking at the sky as it changed from blue to pink to black. I sang I'll be fine (I know now those aren't the lyrics) even though I felt so alone in that moment, I was adrift, I was waiting. And I'd waited long enough. But how could I stop. It was all I had.

I kept my eyes fixed on the door for awhile, then the stars, then back to door blinking against the tears gathering at the edges of my vision. I wanted to take off my shoes and rest my feet on the cool pavement, I wanted to feel rooted in something other than my loneliness, my sadness, but I didn't. Instead I quietly sang along to Sweet Caroline, sang about hands reaching out and felt more alone than ever, felt an ache settle deep and heavy into my bones, i suppose I was rooted by my feelings after all.

I'm not sure why I stayed there, was it in the hope that he'd spot me, rush out, hold me close and say it's going to be okay now , dads here or was it a punishment mixed with self pity. All I know is I couldn't bring myself to go inside but also didn't want to hide. The song ended and the stars above looked on in indifference.

Then a man walked passed. I got ready for a suggestive remark or something similar. there are some streets in my city as there are in most around the world, where women line dark alleyways and men in cars roll down their windows and ask how much, and if you happen to be a women walking alone in those areas you might get asked if your working tonight. So I was prepared for something along those lines, I was prepared to politely smile and get my keys ready between my knuckles if needed. He paused for a moment.

"Are you alright love?" he asked, his voice quiet and concerned.

With the relief came the overwhelming need to tell him the truth, to spill everything to this stranger, to tell him that no I wasn't alright, I was deeply not okay and the heavy feeling has been following me around for so long I dont know how to live without it, instead I indulge in it, I give it a place at the dinner table, I drink it with every meal and tuck it close to my heart every night, I use it as a substitute for a lullaby. But I couldn't , I didn't.

I flashed him a quick smile , the most hollow thing you could imagine, the only thing I could muster. it was just something I did to get him to walk away. "Yeah, I'm good thanks".

He didn't walk away, he stood there with eyes so caring I was afraid they'd make everything I was holding in unravel in a messy pile at our feet. "Are you sure, really?" he knew I wasn't, my sad shining eyes didn't help.

I shook my head slightly, another quick smile "I'm sure."

The icecream man is driving down my street with the song playing loud and I'm Feeling intense nostalgia, for the childhood I still cling to. I feel it melting away, it's cool softness turning watery, slipping between my fingers.

I want to write about the pain of it all, I want to write about the people I qued with outside of food banks; there was an old man who looked like a wise wizard with his long white hair, he waited for a small portion of pasta most days and offered me advice on the best times to turn up, there was a group of polish men with cans of alcohol shared between them, who at first assumed I was polish aswell and tried to talk to me, but all I could say was Przepraszam, nie wiem Polski the old man told me to stand next to him after that, there was also a brother and sister who where both addicted to heroine, most days they seemed to be going through intense withdrawals. We would all wait in a old medieval churchyard, some sat on toppled headstones while others leaned against stone angels with their faces covered. I want to write about what complete isolation and poverty does to you, how eyes don't meet yours and voices talk over you. But when I do, the room goes quiet and people look away, suddenly i feel the need to awkwardly laugh and say so yeah anyway.

Anyone else physically recoil when thinking about how we are made of flesh and bone. I can even look at uncooked meat, if I've seen it raw I can't eat it cooked. And if it looks like a limb I'm not eating it at all. Then I think about how my body is uncooked meat and my bones possible tools and I shudder, I feel far too close to the tendons and the blood, I feel alive, so alive that the sound of my heart is a warning and a blessing, I feel so alive I'm afraid I'll die, I'm afraid of how gruesome it is.

I try to write something, anything, but the words are only clear when I feel them press against my heart and mind. They become muffled when hands reach for them, they loose their shape.

An incoming phone call you say

And I freeze like a deer in headlights

Have I been hit, I feel blooding rushing past my ear drums

My heart is beating quick

then quicker, a fast rapid flicker

it's trying to run away, but my body won't move

Instead my body stands shock still and I watch locked in, but so far removed

I'm dizzy spinning around and round in my amygdala, a ringing is pulsing against the outside walls of it

trying to get inside

I cannot hide

Then the ringing just stops

it's stops

Incoming call is dropped and rational thinking has lost.

I know right now, with everything that's going on in the world, it feels like the night will last forever, it's darkness stretching out for years and years ahead. But I have to say that one day, the soft pull of life will tug at you. You'll find yourself sitting quietly in the summer months enjoying the warm rays and the birdsongs, maybe you plant some flowers or berrys. You'll laugh till your sides ache and your heart lightens. You'll make art and get paint on your clothes and on your carpet. You'll read books your friend recommend and gush over your favourite characters together, maybe you'll write your own. That's what's getting me through, that one day it will be summer, the days soft and I'll have my book finished in my hands and maybe someone will read it. Maybe they won't. But it's things like this, the soft things, that make everything worth it.

I stole a bible a few years ago, I browsed the shelfs not looking to steal but to pass the time and then I saw it, black cover and pages edged in gold. I wasn't religious, more agnostic or an atheist that dabbled in Buddhist ideas, I felt the Christian narrative or at least the one I heard about was always about who would pay. How jesus payed for your "sins", and if you didn't believe then you'll pay in the after life, so hold on to guilt and carry your strife , but I also knew that I wanted , needed something. I wasn't looking for misplaced shame only hope and I wanted to have it tangible in my hands.

So with my stomach empty and my shoes hole ridden, I ignored the fashion magazines with diet tips and beauty tricks and filled my emptyness with something close to hope, if only to cope. I grabbed it from the shelf and I left the store. I was too afraid to steal food , I didn't dare even with my hunger, but possibility of having something bigger than life to cling to on cold and lonely nights seemed worth the risk.

During that time I wasn't doing so well, my mother was drinking and taking drugs with her friends god only knows where and the cupboards where completely bare. I would wander around town, I would wait for the days to pass, I would wait for something to meet me in my loneliness. I wanted so desperately for something like god to reveal itself to me, my mother wasn't someone I could lean on and my father wasn't around so I think naturally I wanted something to believe in, to sustain me when food and family couldn't.

Last year my brother and I where almost homeless, we slept on the hard floor in a cold empty room for three years, we spent every day waiting. I would wait for the stores reduced items at the end of the day, wait for the sun to dry my clothes, I would walk for hours round and round, my shoes didn't last long, I tried ducktaping the soles but the pavement wore through that aswell. When I wasn't waiting outside food banks, staring at white walls or writing, I sometimes would visit the church in town. It's a cathedral and I still have no idea what denomination it's under, but I'd walk around and admire the marbal pillers and stain glass windows, I would try to remember how people hundreds near a thousand years ago carved angles into stone and placed their hope in something other than themselfs, that back then a church may have been the only place you could go if you had no where else. I reminded myself of all the people who would have prayed there, that would have stood where I stood and cried, wished and waited as I did. I would light a candle and I would wish for a better tomorrow, I wasn't asking jesus or a god, I was asking the universe, I was asking subconsciously myself to keep going.

What do you think of religion? (Are you religious?)

There's a girl with my name, we don't look the same but we both huddle under covers when it rains. There's a girl who is almost my age, yet we have the same moon sign and we always forget the time. There's a girl reading what I write who comments every night and I can only hope that life treats you kindly, this girl will one day be in the ground and so will I, but I hope as you age you'll shed those debilitating fears that hold you back and hopefully we'll have lived a life of joy and mostly happy tears.

Hope wins every time the sun peaks over the horizon after a long dark night, it softens the day and baths the ground, it warms the air and we breath easier and maybe our souls uncurl a little from that protective crouch we've grown used to, maybe we let our limbs loosen, maybe we let hope sink into our skin, maybe we let it melt our misery from within.

I drag this hope in hand

I pull it along

Shouldering past

all of my mistakes

I hold it up to the sunlight

I call it radience

I don't let go

Sometimes people drift so far away. Friendships that used to be sleep overs and chasing each other around the park after school, are now liking each others posts every once in awhile. Friendships that felt more like a sisterhood now feel like barely a friend of a friend from work you once knew, memories of us are so much sweeter than this distant present us. We've turned tepid and bland. We've faded.

Sometimes, I go to the store at night, just because the streets are empty and there’s a kind of loneliness that feels almost comforting. But sometimes I’ll see girls, laughing, glitter in their hair sparkling as they spill out of pubs, all bright-eyed, all full of life. It hits me hard, that ache in my chest, that longing for something I can’t quite name. I wonder what it’s like, to have a group of people, to drink and laugh and feel part of something.

I emptied the photo albums and all the pictures from the frames. I took them with me, because life moves fast and time fades most of the past, but those childhood memories I dare not try to erase, least of all your face. Even though alot of the memories are filled with fear and tears I still cling to a time when you where clearer than a faded photograph.

We connect with people without words everyday, some hold a door open, you share a smile with someone at the bus stop or  when passing by each other on a walk, we say I don't know you but I see you, here we both are living together on this little rock, living this little life that is all to fleeting but so worth it.

It reminds me of a friend I had in school. Diane moved from Russia when we where 13, she didnt speak much English, and the few Russian speakers at our school where so much younger than her that she barely saw them. I remember seeing her in the corridor outside our first science lesson, she was leant against the dark green tiles lining the walls, her school uniform brand new and her hair dyed auburn. Everyone had already grouped up with their friends, talking and laughing so loudly it created this mass of sound that only kids can make just before a lesson. My science class was rather chaotic and hyper. Diane stood silent away from everyone.

I wasn't known as the most outgoing in our class, if anything most would have described me as shy, but really I just never had much to say. Seeing her there though, I knew I had to say something, I knew none of the other girls would try and bring her into their social fold, so I went up to her.

"Hi, are you new" she looked at me hesitantly as she tried to piece together bits of language in her head "Yes, I'm Diane" 

"I'm April" there was a beat of silence, neither of us knew what to say and I wasn't the best at small talk, so instead I just looked towards the rest of our class and said "they're a little" and I made a large frazzled gesture with my hands, trying to encapsulate the chaos. She looked from me to them and laughed nodding.

After that we'd sit with each other in all our shared lessons, at the beginning I would write her work for her and I know I probably shouldnt have. but when your 13 and your friend is freaking out over homework being due or not having her notes written down you just end up doing it. Eventually we realised she could write her English assignments in Russian then put them into Google translate, and then I'd re-write them  grammatically correct. This wasn't perfect but it's not like she had a language aid or anything so we made do. Our jokes usually consisted of calling each other suka or using our made up gesture - a sideways palm from the centre of our forehead down to the table. It meant get a load of this nonsense, ffs or I'm an idiot, usually used when someone was making a fuss in lesson or when we'd make a silly mistake.

We didn't need words, not when we had laughter and silly little gestures, sometimes I felt closer to her than with friends I'd had for years. I guess what we have now is a language made up of vine and tiktok references, that you could giggle with someone over even when your language didn't translate. And in some ways we're more connected over those trends and references than anything else despite the language barriers. We connect over joy, humour and humanity.

Diane moved back to Russia before we turned 16. I don't know where she is now or how much she remembers of me, but I do treasure our friendship. Wherever you are suka I hope your okay. I miss you.

I haven't really got much outside of this, and this is just me speaking to everyone and no one all at once, it feels shallow. I was going to say I felt just as shallow, almost empty but that's not really true, if anything I feel like I'm about to burst, I'm filled with so much longing and hope and just want, I just want so badly. For more laughter, more connection, just more. There really is nothing like the small moments you share with your loved ones, those inside jokes that leave you folded over and cackling loudly, while strangers judge you at the social absurdity, but it only makes you laugh harder. Or those times at school you'd ask me to draw on your hand because you liked the sensation and then you'd play with my hair, you'd braid it. I feel ravenous for those moments. So maybe what I really feel is hunger.

I worry

I stress

I am a pylon

I am tangled in cables

I am no longer connected to the grid

Energy is lost

It's falls through a sieve

And all I'm left with is dust and static lint

I barely rinse

I Repeat

the same defeat of sinking into my bed

I am animated meat

suspended over my own stupid once avoidable mess.

Have I become addicted

to the sadness,

has it evolved into a hybrid

of apathy

of melancholy.

Will it stitch itself to my eyelids.

Will it clog up my narrow veins.

Is this the type of pain,

that drives my buried hope insane.

I'm going to be honest, I'm not happy. Instead I just am. Just here. Just there. I'm, just. I spent way too long picking the colours for this blog instead of cleaning my house, I spent way too long worrying over my poems instead of worrying over the bills, I spent way too long writing about things that have happened and not about what could. I reply with flowers under comments because I'm worried I'll sound too blunt without them, but sometimes it feels fake, because I'm not that person alone, I don't think in pretty colours, happiness doesn't bloom behind my eyelids in pinks and yellows. Instead my thoughts are blunt and apathy stuffs itself into my ears and covers my eyes. It encases me in a womb, and I'm just waiting to be reborn. Into what exactly I don't know, just more awake I hope, less rotting in bed and more laughing in a field somewhere.

I can't think about you for too long, but sometimes you climb out of my Amygdala and I let your face press against my prefronal cortex. Your presence is mostly wrapped in bubbler wrap, hidden in a back room, somewhere near the things I can't talk about and the things I should have. I've quietly closed the door, but it's not locked, I don't think it ever will be, I don't think I want it be. But that room isn't a place I like to visit, it only holds you and the things that shouldn't have happened.

I saw you there. Cigarette lit and back against the door. I watched you, I hadn't seen you in years yet you looked the same, But nothing between us was. I wanted you to notice me, I couldn't approach you, so instead I hoped you'd find my eyes and hold out your heart for me to love again. But our hearts didn't know each other anymore, so I left you by the door.

Sometimes this comfort rots. Sometimes this resting mocks me (about the life I want to live).

Is your username inkspilled spelled wrong and if not what on earth does prilled mean

Lol, no its just part of my name turned into a verb (kinda) which is April if you wanted to know.

Cold Pizza at 5AM

-kalika

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-kalika