Old, Worn Socks

This is a wooden box,
For my old, worn socks,
These I no longer can wear,
Socks, old and worn,
Can be comforting and known,
But they can leave you cold and bare.

I could wear them for a while,
And they would make me smile,
And inspire a nice long think,
When when all thoughts are thunk,
I'll put them in the trunk,
And put on the bright new pink.

So my old, worn socks,
In your little wooden box,
I'll keep you all away,
And wear socks that are new,
And pink and red and blue,
A bright new colour everyday.

When you break (January 26, 2012)

When you break
little pieces of you
scatter.

If you break with grace
and dignity
and accept that you can break,
then on occasion you can recover
those pieces of you
that shattered
in little nooks of your memories
and corners of your heart.

But if you wait for
a passing breeze
or a casual word
or a careless touch
or a hurtful phrase
to knock you into a wall,
then you shatter into little fragments
and you can never recover
those pieces of you
forever hidden in the darkened corners
where you've left them
to be forgotten.

Three nights ago, we talked about you for the first time. I hadn't ever talked about you before, see, because so long as you were the shadow of a hope in my heart, no one could take away the dream. But somehow in the middle of a terrible quarrel, you came up. I won't say the mention of you calmed me down. Instead, it did something quite different and unprecedented. It sliced through the pure opaque blackness of my blind rage, the one that had left shards of glass on the floor. Maybe I shouldn't tell you that the hands that will guide you, and feed you, and nurture you, and teach you, and learn from you, belong to a singularly neurotic woman. But you must know that this sliver of bright light, which started out only as a small burst, has cast the rest of it in shadow, as the slowly rising sun might cast a warm, near-hopeful glow on the world. This is the first thing I want to tell you. Shinjiru koto no hakanasa wo kimi ga hikari ni kaete yuku...

January 10, 2012

She's going to sweep them away,
the fragments of the cups and plates
I broke last night in anger.
But there will be these tiny shards,
snuggled in the corners,
where no broom can reach them.
They will lie there for a while
until one day I see them and
am reminded
of a distant horror, a fading memory
of hysteria and guilt and shame.
I will shake it off, and pick up
all the shards with my hands,
throw them in the dustbin, and
never see them again.
The cuts on my fingers will heal soon,
the blood will wash away,
and nothing will remain but the distant horror,
a fading memory, and a lesson
buried somewhere deep within.

January 5, 2012

Little Happy Thing
A Terribly Mismatched Poem

You aren't supposed to be sappy
About little tiny things
But this did make me happy,
And so it counts
for a moment memorable enough
for this account.

There was wind my hair
and the ground
swept away as the motorcycle flared.
The sun caught my eye,
already bedazzled
with every moment passing by.

There was the warmth of a hand
on my knee,
and time did stand still
just for that moment, that first
touch, with which
my heart, of the non-anatomical persuasion, did burst.

See, this is quite sappy,
And a little tiny thing...
Why should one touch make you happy,
and make you want to sing,
Of rainbows and sunshine and muffins,
And other happy things?

How had she gone from being so complex to a petty, predictable woman? Sometimes, when she looked at herself in the mirror, she couldn't recognise herself. It wasn't the wrinkles under her eyes or the white in her hair, which was all very new and very perplexing. It was rather the distance, the unfathomable separation between the self she could recognise - as infinitely reflexive, full of a myriad of different interests, ideas and dreams - and the self she was, composed of petty Monday blues, the wrong words spoken at the worst times, and concerns of her own welfare that had nothing to do with actually caring for herself. How had she become this person - this half-woman - who didn't know what it meant to love and to allow herself to be loved, whose thoughts were so dissociated that she could scarcely formulate a phrase with any true meaning?

18/06/2011



There was once a child who sat under a tree in the dwindling twilight, and spoke to cardboard boxes, because no one else wanted to talk to her.
There was once a child who was everyone's second choice of friend.
There was once a child who wanted to be loved so powerfully that she created people in her head who loved her. Because she was very angry about something in real life, no one really loved her outside of her head. And so, eventually, when the child grew older and her imagination turned towards the more realistic, she found that figments of her imagination would leave her.
She created fantasies of rejection and departure, perhaps in the same way as children create fantasies of homes and schools and families -- to understand something that was a very basic part of her now.
There was once a child who was very alone, but had no idea why - and refused to accept it.


Every story, someone said, is a story of infinite loneliness. There was once a child who believed in this.