all the stories never told

snow

2009-12-16T23:26:52Z

imploding sounds and confetti gushing out over our messy floors, i want to stop time, i want to be mislead, i want to stand here in the freezing cold with you and never mind, never mind.

misspine @ 2009-12-14T16:07:00

2009-12-14T15:07:52Z

to let myself go, to lose myself completely, in art, in love, in lust. to feel my brain buzzing, my blood pumping, light-headed and light-footed, several cares in the world, just none of them important enough to spoil this. barefeet in grass, creeping dusk, creaking floors. reliving your favourite childhood stories, knowing full well that even if this moment never returns they keep on churning inside, shouting their lines louder to drown out the noise of everyday life.

misspine @ 2009-10-09T22:01:00

2009-10-09T21:23:26Z

i can't look at you without flinching
you're like the smell of burnt plastic
or blood running down the kitchen wall
love letters written in eyeliner
scared i'll soon forget
smudged feelings
hearts beating
praying you'll stick it out
till the morning

snapshot

2009-09-22T22:38:57Z

i keep forgetting you, every day. how we used to play house and invite all our little friends over, teddy bears and dolls in pretty dresses. i'd get out my best china, tiny little cups not meant for adult hands, checkered tablecloth and flowers stolen from someone's garden in the middle of the night. and you'd lace the tea, dancing, shouting, and wide-eyed teddy bears with their stuffing pouring out over our wooden floors.

misspine @ 2009-09-04T22:11:00

2009-09-04T20:21:17Z

I've made you up. I'm waiting for someone to mend my broken bones, someone who won't love me back. My expectations are making disappointment impossible, but in reality even my expectations of heartbreaks and funfairs are ridiculously vain, possibly even ideas shamelessly stolen from greater men. I'm waiting for someone not to return my calls, and if they ever do I pretend I'm not there. All I ever wanted was for someone to rip my heart out and tear it to shreds, but as it is I'm watching you go by, one by one by one

misspine @ 2009-08-30T21:29:00

2009-08-30T19:31:14Z

i don't know what to say so i let my hands run over your back, feeling your muscles moving between my fingers, lungs rising, falling, rising. you don't look at me anymore, you look past me, at something else, someone else. i don't believe in destiny, i said, and you nodded, laughed, hoped. we held hands and walked away. you said nothing and i listened to your rushed breath, against my neck, against my thigh, against my wall. you don't look at me anymore, you can't see me, i'm hiding behind these trees. i can't let you love me with all my flaws, all my faults, all my shortcomings. i can't let you cos that would mean having to acknowledge them and that hurts entirely too much to keep it together.

misspine @ 2009-08-25T21:24:00

2009-08-25T19:30:52Z

If I ever forget you, you're here, in my childish handwriting, in faded photographs squinting at the sun, eyes blinking as the shutter clicks, looking away, your ice cream dripping onto your jeans. If I ever forget you, you're here to remind me, always nineteen, always with your short boyish hair, a summer spent on trains, listening to strange languages, losing my shoes in the streets, kissing dark-haired boys, keeping our passports under our pillows, dreaming, dreaming. If I ever forget you, you're here to tell me that there is no such thing as responsibility, we'll catch the next train out of here, sleep under the starry sky, drink wine heated by the sun, get lost in fields. There is no such thing as responsibility, reality, and yet you will never return to tell the tale

misspine @ 2009-08-18T23:48:00

2009-08-18T21:48:57Z

i tie ribbons around my arms, tangling up, forever not letting go. you told me i could never, would never -

this is not the truth. these are smiles and gestures put together for you, for show, for my mother and the rest of them, hiding behind stages whispering loudly, mouthing the wrong words. she told me i could never, would never. could never. would never. this debris is more than i ever asked for.

misspine @ 2009-08-11T21:56:00

2009-08-11T20:07:04Z

i keep writing my name down so as to not forget who i am. i want to exist when i'm not here. i want someone to think of me the most. it doesn't even have to be you, i will keep running in circles trying to catch the last person i slept with, the last person to look at me in a crowded room. look at me again. look at me again and again and again. and i will keep asking, never stopping for one moment to hear the answer. i am the girl with a jar full of coppers and a laugh not fuelled by drugs. i am the girl i left crying in the street at 5am. i am the girl who can't decide where she should be and thus can never be the first to leave. i am the girl you will remember when she's gone. look at me. white knuckles adorning the glass. repeat. repeat. repeat.

excerpt one

2009-06-26T22:57:32Z

You lie next to me in this tiny bed. Our arms tangled up, pulsating with the same beat. One two, one two. My lungs next to yours, breathing. Still. One two, one two. I keep my eyes closed, listening to nothing, telling myself that you're real. You're here. One two, two one, in out. In.

misspine @ 2009-06-22T22:54:00

2009-06-22T20:54:54Z

I wanted to remember this forever, you, us. I wanted to remember this and I was scared I wouldn’t, so I took a knife and I carved you into my arm and at night I’d put it under my head to keep you close. Your heartbeat next to mine, your name against my eyes. I carved you into my skin so you’d never leave and now I can’t get rid of you no matter how hard I try.

misspine @ 2009-06-04T21:40:00

2009-06-04T19:41:04Z

i knew the ending before the start, knew what you’d say, how you’d say it, words forming and then the silence as they faded into the sound of other people’s voices over coffee. i felt your hand in mine and how you let go and i didn’t cry because crying never got me what i wanted anyway. i knew the ending before the start and i can’t for the life of me understand why i did go on

misspine @ 2009-05-13T21:14:00

2009-05-13T19:16:41Z

those black and white movies speak the truth, i'll be lauren bacall if you'll be my bogart. we'll never run out of excuses or money or attention and i'll give you the look whenever i want you do to the dishes. we'll host cocktail parties and i'll always wear pretty dresses and that husky voice will get us past any queue. there's nothing you'll have to do, just be my trophy husband. there's nothing you'll have to do. just try to avoid the cancer if you can.

misspine @ 2009-03-02T22:59:00

2009-03-02T22:05:06Z

i miss the sound of birds, but even more than that i miss how i used to talk louder, stifle it, hide it underneath piles of bottles and trains and strangers' bodies

misspine @ 2009-01-18T17:59:00

2009-01-18T17:08:37Z

one wedding and four funerals
that's my count so far
despite how much i hate crying in public
how much i hate sobbing so loudly the priest can hardly be heard
he speaks in tongues anyway
making you into something you are not
something you were not
words in my mouth
swallowed

swallowed

and i still think weddings are silly and
can't believe people care about china or where to sit at the table
as long as i get a chair
as long as he tells me he loves me
as long as

he doesn't love me because there
is
no
he

misspine @ 2008-12-21T22:04:00

2008-12-21T21:15:48Z

It's you and me doing cartwheels all the way across the lawn and over to our old school where the windows are dark and even if we press our noses to the glass we can't tell the names on the drawings. We just know that they're not ours anymore, no Toms and Annas and Richards and Michelles, they don't even look like us. We're getting old, you say and as you turn to leave I take your hand but I don't turn my head, heavy breaths that make my nose wet, cold. I see my old desk but it's empty and the sun is warm against my back and I want nothing more than for it to be late August 1988 again.

misspine @ 2008-12-06T15:49:00

2008-12-06T14:49:28Z

She's sitting opposite me smoking her cigarettes down to the bone. Leaving the burnt ends in that heartshaped ashtray her mum bought in Spain and lighting another one as if she's forgotten that she just put one out. Let's talk about Important Things, she says and I stare at the bird sitting at the window sill picking its ratty feathers. Like what? But I don't think she heard me because she sticks her head inside the fridge and I look at her arched back and remember how it used to be, how we would talk about these Important Things of hers without any effort at all. Now that her bathroom cabinets are empty and all I can find to ease the pain are two dusty paracetamols under the kitchen table, now that her phone is broken and even gaff tape can't keep it together, now that all we have are these long Sunday mornings day after day after day after day. I think she's forgotten my nickname and how she used to sit on the kitchen counter eating uncooked spaghetti, telling me in great detail how processed meat would damage my insides. Let's talk about Important Things, her voice muffled by the fridge and my eyes squinting against the pale winter sun.

misspine @ 2008-11-30T23:02:00

2008-11-30T23:02:52Z

I want to feel these things and not numb myself down. I'm antsy and nervous and I can't get any work done because my tummy is doing somersaults the way I never dared as a child and I want to feel these things but I don't want to feel these things. I want to feel happy again, utterly and completely happy like when you came running home from work or like I felt the first day of summer in 1989 and I want grass between my toes and in my hair and to keep spinning round and round and round and your arms to be there to comfort me even if I don't need comforting. We share all these memories and yet I don't know the colour of your eyes and it's your slow breath I listen to when I lie in bed staring at the ceiling. It scares me that you're real, that you're made from disgusting flesh and pulsating blood, it scares me that you'll be the next one to let me down, that you'll change when I turn my back or close my eyes even if just for a second. And here I am, always keeping a brave face, making silent vomiting my special skill. So I call you up and tell you yet another dark secret. Let's make this something to remember.

play dead I

2008-10-13T10:53:54Z

i'm a little girl again and i lie absolutely still under the couch, peeling the button fastenings with my eyes, imagining the buttons popping out over my head. i can hear your slow breathing and you didn't see me, your hand didn't fall over the edge and rummage around for me. i would have let you catch my sleeve, let my t-shirt brush against your fingers so you'd get startled and draw your hand back and i'd hold my breath and wait for your face to appear. i would have let you be the eagle to my Prometheus and hack away on my liver like no other but it seems you have forgotten this old game and maybe i should crawl out from this dusty place while you sleep, tiptoe into the kitchen and grow the fuck up.

misspine @ 2008-10-11T00:10:00

2008-10-10T23:17:01Z

take my tears and put them in your drawers, hide them between worn-out t-shirts and letters you never sent. it's not as if you ever told me to leave it be, it's not as if you ever told me how to let go. i put my clothes on in the morning as long as i remembered to take them off at night. you brush past me on my way to the bus and for a split second i have a hand in mine, a pulse moving back and forth between us. i never believed in jesus and they told me it didn't matter, that he'd find a way into my heart and stay there forever. i'd rather have you, i answered. i'd rather have you.

misspine @ 2008-09-28T22:26:00

2008-09-28T20:27:36Z

The snow crackles underneath our feet and you know so well. How I could never wake up at the same time every day, how I could never fill in those applications the right way without stopping for coffee breaks and my life would have been so much easier if I actually enjoyed the taste of coffee. For some time I tried those pills, those caffeinated ones, but if felt like cheating on you, like I was taking that guy from the club last month up on his offer, his indecent proposal I just laughed at and shrugged off despite the fact that his eyes were pretty and dark blue and he smelled kinda nice. You know so well and yet I turned him down, the pretty stranger, the girl on the tube, I turned them down and dragged you down to my parents house for the weekend, hiding your contacts behind the bathroom sink and forcing you to wear your glasses. I was taking deep breaths for the entire train journey and preparing what I was going to say and I told you not to ruffle your hair and I told you to hold my hand and kiss me on the cheek during dinner. You did everything I asked of you and you wore your glasses and a t-shirt that didn't have an obscene message written down the front and yet all I could think about was the guy from the club, the girl on the tube, the boy sitting in front of me in English Lit, the man who stops by my shop every Saturday, all the dudes I fancy off telly and the ones that play in bands and get sweaty on stage.

misspine @ 2008-08-25T00:26:00

2008-08-24T22:36:26Z

We're sitting in the park where you'll abandon me. I swirl my polkadotted umbrella between my fingers, making it a perfect hideaway from the sun, from your muffled words, from getting home late and getting up early. It hasn't rained for weeks and the grass is going yellow then brown, you twine it around your naked toes. You have that August tan still. I close my eyes against the sun, watch the blood rush by making different patterns all in red. Just stretch out your arm and sneak it past the umbrella, just stretch it out and make sure I remember you, make sure I'm still here to be left.

misspine @ 2008-08-24T17:18:00

2008-08-24T15:21:32Z

I drank a lot cos that's how my clichéd mind works and I put on tacky golden heels in the hopes of making myself laugh. My achievements didn't even fill a measly postcard so I let it hit the bottom of the postbox without putting your name on it. It was a Saturday and even if I made sure to semi-trip down the stairs from the street he didn't bat an eyelid as I walked into his shop. I hid behind the shelves, catching glimpses of him between Parker and Huysmans and Bichsel. I've already read all of those and my credit card was overdrawn from the online shopping that was supposed to make the lady at the post office think I am popular. No more excuses, I told myself as I wobbled up the stairs again. The rain had stopped and I walked the same streets back to my flat. I tried telling myself that things will be different in the morning, I tried pretending I was a gorgeous Russian spy with a high ponytail, I tried to remember the last time I hugged someone and I have nothing I have nothing I have nothing, except sunglasses I can hide behind and a recollection of all the doors I've had to close.

misspine @ 2008-08-03T01:02:00

2008-08-03T00:12:38Z

I don't remember the things I should remember, like what day it was yesterday or how many states the US consists of. I mean to look it up but I forget. I try counting the stars but I lose track. Of time, of myself. It's getting dark and light again and I don't believe I've slept even if my sheets are creased. They smell of everyone but me. I empty the cupboards and want the new year to begin. I count pennies and put them all in my pockets and feel my jeans gravitating towards the sweltering tarmac, melting the coppers into cigarettes and bottles and polaroid film. If I buy more cans, more rice, more everything, if I refill our cupboards, if I resend all the invitations and make you all come over and pretend you've never been before and we would throw slumber parties on the lawn and our neighbours would talk about us over breakfast and this could be the new year. This could be the new year when I hear my name on their lips and know for a fact that I exist.

misspine @ 2008-08-02T03:51:00

2008-08-02T03:09:51Z

I wish I had an eyeliner in my bag so I could draw fake mustaches and talk in funny accents. You held my hand like the BFF you were and I felt silly but I could have sworn your heart was racing, but I didn't swear, not once, not ever. I'd been meaning to make you a mixtape and you sang along to all the right songs and laughed and your breath smelt faintly of cheap drinks with obnoxious names. We'll be back tomorrow, you said to some people I didn't know and kissed one of the boys on the cheek. I laughed and tap danced past the drunken queue outside McDonald's and begged you to sing old 90's hits with me, and I held your hand innocently all the way down the escalators, sitting on ripped seats on the train, all the way until I had to get off at my stop and you made faces and blew kisses from behind the smudged glass and I stood facing the wrong way up the escalators, my palm cooling off and yeah, we'll be back tomorrow.