Snakes in the road

This evening the street was so quiet
like a snake in the blackness,
slowly slipping along, slick with rain;
dark puddles of onyx muddling the ground,
blurring boundaries. The orange street
light poisoned the evening, stained everything
the colour of bile

A terrible habit

I smoke because I love those subtle tendrils
Curling gently round my fingers
Slowly clutching at my throat and
Conspiring to kill me softly, slowly,
As I smile and laugh
As my pupils dilate
As I slip, swiftly towards tender oblivion

black amongst pink

She had been staring at the lines in her pajama bottoms for some time before she realised that there was actually an awful lot of black in there beside the threads of silver and pink. This made her feel suddenly uncomfortable as she sat there, thinking about the same things that she always thought about, realising that once again she had failed to escape past decisions; that her attempted adjustments in lifestyle choices, most apparent outwardly in her feeble attempts at fashion were fruitless. There was simply no escaping herself. This is a hard thing to accept for anyone and it induced an intense sensation of nausea. She had read somewhere, once, she could no longer remember where, that once you got older you became fixed, that your characteristics were unchangeable; this terrified her. To be forever stuck in a rut, eternally set like concrete upon one course of action, one line of behaviour, one set of rules and beliefs, this was almost incomprehensible to the girl who wished to be all things to all people, adored, accepted, acknowledged, but never, ever, defined. How could she become one thing, a puzzle to be figured out and completely understood by anybody with an ounce of insight. That had happened once before; the results had been catastrophic. It cannot be just anybody, this time, she thought. When you understand how something works, then you know the best way to dismantle it as well as fix it. She already felt compromised, discombobulated, broken down into individual chunks of damaged goods. She felt like a clockwork doll with several cogs missing, disjointed, incomplete and overwhelmingly false. If anyone could see what was contained within this shiny, perfectly constructed exterior, the oil, the grease, the mechanics of this creature, the neurosis which is exhausting, so time consuming, then they would destroy it.

She was struck by a sudden thought as she lay on her bed, three repulsive black horseflies from the field buzzing above her head. All it takes is time for feelings to change, for pleasance to turn into unpleasantness, for affection to be transmuted into affectation. She lived inside herself for the most part, in a world of elaborate fantasy. Reality never quite lived up to her dreams and she was fast tiring of failed expectations, so it was more satisfying to live out her existence inside her brain. How many times, after all, can a creature be crushed? She went inside herself and found a memory of a summers afternoon spent in her grandmother's garden, jumping from the patio into the uncut grass barefoot, over the daisies that were so vulgar in every aspect - shape, size, scent; of brushing her fingertips over the silvery, purple lavender, avoiding the bees, finding a butterfly basking there. So light! So beautiful! Like a fairy. She remembered staring at its dusty, silky-looking wings and stroking it, just once. Her mother had scolded her and told her that once you touched the wing of a butterfly it could no longer fly, that she had effectively killed it, slowly, softly, gently; doomed it to a disabled death. How she had been transported with these words from such intense feelings of exaltation and wonder to to untold misery and guilt. Murderess. Heartless, unthinking child!

She knew she had aged since then, because she thought about the experience separately from herself, with logic, although for the most part she lacked that characteristic. Or rather, she was logical to the point of illogicality, over-analysing the tiniest exchange until she was fraught and confused with the possibility of countless meanings and reasons for what was essentially, imagined behaviour. Her thoughts and feelings, once inseparable, could now be disconnected, even if it were only for the briefest of moments. She had permeated that memory as a bystander, observing her own childlike self; her adult self laughed bitterly, 'Better to die by a caress than be spun up and sucked dry by the kiss of a spider, or swallowed up whole in a birds beak.' Her mother, much younger then, barely a year or so older than she was now, beset with the worries of bringing up four children, looked at her reproachfully, and she caught herself. Is this what I have become? Is this what I was? She thought about it for a moment, which was almost a butterflies lifetime and then she turned and walked down the path, black tarmac flecked with pretty white chips, down the side of the bungalow, to swing on the wrought iron gate. I don't understand any more now than I ever did, she thought. But then she was back, in bed, the threads of black glaring out amongst stripes of silver and pink, garishly clashing with the polka dot sheets.