six; knots in time

the first time i ran into her, i was carrying my shopping home and i didn’t really notice until it was too late. it was getting dark and my eyes lingered where they never had before and her face was imprinted on me for the weeks to come. i couldn’t blink without her face staring at me, like i was a poison in her very veins. it set me on fire, bouncing back between my bones like a game i didn’t want to play in the first place. but that feeling stuck with me, stuck inside of me.

my fingers were bouncing at the tip of who she was. where i had seen her face before, where i knew her dark eyes, and her slanted lips from – who was she, and where did she come from?

i didn’t sleep for three days, and my caffeine fuelled body hallucinated bugs all over the walls, and i was crying because i couldn’t get the washing machine to work – and i remembered. i remembered her face and i stood up straight. she was me, she was me but she was so far advanced – so far forward that her hair no longer frayed at the ends where i bleached it blonde when i was twenty two. she had all the buttons on her coat, and she had perfectly manicured nails. she was pulled together like a toy stitched at it’s seams and pulled into another universe.

i didn’t see her for a few years then, as i continued living a life i was unsure about, steady shaky stances and cowardly corners all turned into a life i was sure i had no way of escaping. i was locked here, as who i am with no escape.

i saw her on a train that day. i was reading a book, and so was she, but her eyes didn’t slip over half the page like mine did – they were steady and she peered through her glasses like she could actually finally see – like everything before her was stretched into perfection, like a linear line of wonder. she didn’t look up at me, she probably never would because i was pushed so far below her, i wouldn’t even show up on the radar that scanned her lungs, but i felt it in mine.

i saw her once more, before the final time. and i was sitting in a coffee shop, and she stood between me and a boy who had been flashing his soul-winning smile at me across a latte and she wandered through like she owned the place. she apologized, with a voice that i recognized from my own body and i was too shocked to reply. but still, her eyes glazed over me and i felt a cold wind pass through me, as two knots in time overlapped – as they slipped past each other and touched fingers so suggestively that i still shudder. she was wearing a pencil skirt and was holding a laptop bag across her shoulder and her lips were golden red and she was perfect. she was everything i strove towards, and could never envision – personified and stripped bare. i looked back at my coffee, and back at the boy and i almost forgot about her, suddenly overwhelmed.

the last time was the strangest. i stepped from the shower. i could hear the hum of the tv in the background and there was too much steam to breathe deeply but happiness spread through my veins like i was driven by it. i walked to the mirror and let the steam evaporate off it’s surface and there she was. i could feel my body contracting, as though my memory had been removed by a snake. it could never be possible, any of this – all of this. i was a shell of what i once was, but even more of a shadow of what i could become, and i was messy and broken and limp and staring right back into my own eyes. i felt the knots that had once overlapped, fall together, in place.

four; genevieve

she had never heard silence before – not really, not once. she was born alongside him, born with his words battling hers, competitive and aggressive and his own. she loathed him and she loved him, loved him like a familiar tumor, turning your stomach inside out – but really what else are you supposed to do when you’re born with the voice inside your head.

there wasn’t silence, there was conversation, there were sleepy mumbles and hasty grumbles and feisty remarks, and there was lingering lust and subconscious whispered confessions. and just like that, genevieve had never lived a day of her life alone. they had just grown together like twisted trees, and she never batted an eyelid.

they called him a phase, a deep deep desire to never let her body wither all alone and unconscious. they drugged her and whispered into her sleeping ears, praying to the good sweet lord that whatever daemon possessed her would slip out silently like tears. but what they never noticed was the haphazard sultry whispers that always brought him back. genevieve spoke with the words of the wind, in tunes that only existed in lands long since extinguished – and it was her curled tongue that kept the voice anchored to her mind. they all watched her, watched her walk with poise and watched her talk with eloquence – they watched her exist entirely honestly and whole and they worried. how can a girl, a girl so small and so aware, how could she live in a world knowing that her mind was shared with invisibility – shared with blank space, a blank canvas, that could never be whole, not ever exist outside of her soul.

like a town with pitchforks the people protested. protested to the profanity they didn’t know existed – protested to the potent potential lies that encrusted a young girls mind, capturing her in a land of make believe and mystery.

and one day when they were napping, curled together like an over-grown plant – tucked between a tree and wooden shed, sharing secrets and screaming subtleties - they came for her.

the priest had a face like a rock – curved in ways that would never change, not for the wind and not for the ocean – he was hard and cruel and kind, wrapped together in a coat of bruises. and he whispered words to her open wounds, ignoring the screams that slipped from her lips – ignoring the fact that he didn’t know if they were even coming from inside her.

the family that once held her dearly, stood with eyes wide and milky, confused and mad at the man they themselves had created, begging to destroy their own monster.

nobody asked genevieve, nobody asked if his voice hurt her ears, or if his view of politics disagreed with her own. nobody asked her if he annoyed her, if he drew her attention away from the words on a page, and forced her to stop breathing. nobody asked her – and so they didn’t know. they didn’t know the voice talked her off the edge of a cliff. the voice stopped her hands when they pressed too hard against her wind-pipe. they didn’t ask because they thought they were right, in all the wrong ways.

once the stone-faced priest had left all his words floating in the air, plucking at the hairs at the back of her neck, she felt him shift. the voice that always tucked between her left ear, and the crook of her neck, the voice that she was born listening to – lived next to, and shared her life with. he was being pulled from her, like poison through a vacuum.

an inexistent family watched with horror plastered on their ignorant lips. their eyes swelled into white puddles, dripping across their faces as they watched her distort. watched her tear in two. they cried in confusion as the man walked away from her. she was small, she was so small and now she was half of what she once had been. the man was bigger, but he was wrong. his face was impossible to look at, and his body bent in ways that ignored every rule ever written. genevieve cried then, cried in confusion and pain and solidarity.

the man made a noise that nobody heard, it was pain and impossibility and terror – it was confusion and unbearable shifted smoke, and he was homeless – lost and wandering. he stared at genevieve with an intensity that nobody could see, except her. and she watched, watched with her withered body as he escaped. she saw regret and terror in his face, and she saw his legs move with an uncanny swiftness that was not necessary. they could not see him, they never would, they would never understand as long as she lived.

she lost control of her legs, she lost control of the contorted movement of her limbs and she collapsed in a pile of broken sinew and shredded bone and she cried tears of white blood cells and she broke clean in half – and she watched half of her run past her house, and slide down the road. and she screamed, watching her family erupt, watching their panic as she knew that she was never going to be the same, never going to move with poise again.

for genevieve’s seventeenth birthday, she asked for a new red bicycle, or a set of encyclopaedias to line up along her shelf, like the set she admired at her grandmothers. instead she got an exorcism.

three; so i didn't

i didn't want to miss today. i didn't want to fail again. and this was the best i could do. i'm sorry, i am very sorry.

there was a shotgun and a bullet and they tunneled together –

clutching their dirty bodies together in a tantrum storm.

i watched the blood spread like fingers of a fist across my chest.

it was a lifetime of oh god I’m so sorry please don’t.

so i didn’t.

i felt words pull my flesh from my ligaments,

and i squashed like overdone legumes,

and i crumpled into a pile of once-was has-beens.

i felt my world tear, i felt realities separating,

like sand through glass.

so i didn't.

i was the calm of the ocean at midnight.

i was the silence of darkness and

i was the stillness of new born death.

i settled like dust, over every orifice of desk-space and book-shelf and camcorder.

i settled in your lungs and i tried, with all my might.

to trick you, just once more,

just for one more minute.

two; penpals

nobody thought it was strange that the sun had stopped rising in the east. nobody questioned the fact that technically the world was spinning backwards, that days were running in reverse. nobody noticed that they woke up and ate breakfast when the sun was backing away from the earth, rather than merrily approaching it. everybody was too busy looking at screens, and at papers, and at each other to notice one tiny little detail, like that. 

the sun thought it was funny, at first - watching the world carry on without a doubt in their minds. watching them flutter through their days, watching their feet march them through harmonious routines, watching them kiss each other when they arrived home at the end of a long day (still unaware they were doing it backwards) and telling dull stories everybody pretended were mildly amusing. he thought it was all very amusing, until one day - it wasn’t.

how insignificant did somebody have to be, before nobody saw him? before nobody noticed that he had tricked them all, before he became such an oblivious mess that nobody dared to look at him. the sun was sad.

the people, however - didn’t notice this either. they never noticed the light starting to dim, the way that the day shrunk in size, like it had been put through the wrong cycle in the washing machine. they carried on their days, only bothering to rush a little more, to get the milk before the shops closed when the sun finally made his descent. 

“oh they are silly little creatures,” the moon mumbled, one day as she drifted past her lifelong friend, “they never notice anything - especially things that don’t involve them.”

and the sun was hesitant to agree, because he saw them compliment hair, and clothes, and choice in books - he saw them hold hands, and tongues and try their best to please others. he knew they couldn’t all be too bad, when he saw them share their food, knowing the hunger of their own. they couldn’t be so bad, so by the logical deductions of life, the only thing failing in this relationship - was the sun himself. 

he shone brighter then, trying to catch attention - he flew into an over enthused life of torture, burning himself from the outside, in - trying with all his might to please the people who never took the time to look up, to look him in the eyes and whisper their appreciation. he was nothing, he realised soon, he was nothing to them - other than a source of light in which for them to admire themselves.

he lived lonely then, without a positive thought to keep him company. he pushed away the moon and the stars and he closed his eyes when he had to give off light (which he did, because he was kind-hearted and loving, despite his dishonest receivers) he turned off his brain, and stared dully into the darkness that seemed to be his existence. 

there was a boy, who had lived for a whole twelve years, and in those twelve years he noticed a number of things. he noticed that it doesn’t matter if you watch the pot, or if you don’t - it will take the exact same amount of time, only one way lets you use your time more productively, and so he changed the saying to “a watched pot is merely a waste of time.” and he noticed that his father had brought the wrong paint for the second half of their newly renovated house, when the start was off-cream, and the end seemed to be pale custard - but he also knew how hard his father had tried, and so he never mentioned it. he knew that people liked to be told nice things, and that they also liked to sit down at the end of the day, and take their shoes off - in fact, he knew a lot of things. and he knew that the sun was sad. 

“it’s winter,” his father had scoffed. “this is what happens in winter,” and maybe it was, the boy thought - maybe it was, but this time it wasn’t. nobody asked him how he knew this, nobody even believed him, but that was okay. this boy was special, and he knew what he knew, and nobody had to tell him otherwise. 

he wrote a letter, first - a letter listing his appreciation, and his undefined love for the sun, for the warmth he gives off, for the light, for the way that he felt both of them touch his heart when he walked to school in the morning - knowing that this was a very pure form of fondness, being caressed right through his ghostly flesh. he told him that he was sorry that he was sad, and that he was sure it wasn’t worth it. it’s never worth being sad, when instead you can be happy. happiness is warm too, so maybe if the sun wasn’t feeling happy, that’s why he felt so cold, and in turn that coldness made him unhappy. the boy knew about this cycle and he warned his friend, that some day - some day very far in the future, this could all have been avoided, because he knows it is hard, but he knows it is possible. finally he told the sun that he loved him, and he hoped he would be okay, and he hoped that his heart would mend itself because he was fond of the sun that he once was, but he was great the way he is now, too - but just, it’s not always best to change when you’ve become very negative.

the sun cried for a few days, when he received a letter tied to a balloon - he cried because his hot fingers burst the balloon, and the balloon was very pretty, and he cried because he felt his heart thaw. the people on the earth didn’t notice his tears, despite the very wet day they had - and they carried on like normal, this time with umbrellas. the sun wrote back, with much haste. he was not fixed, not by any long shot - but he felt thawed and refreshed and scrubbed raw, but he had a friend now. a single friend in an infinite universe, and that made him important. 

one; alexander

by the time alexander reached the fork in the road, he had already forgotten why he had started walking to begin with. he knew he was mad about something – and he knew that something had happened to make him mad. but with every step he took, every corner he turned, he felt his anger slowly subside into a dull roar in the back of his chest. and now, now he had forgotten what had driven his decision – and he was standing at a very distinct fork in the road. 

to the left he was staring at a road paved with red bricks, lined with autumn swept trees and a smell of burning caramel – a scent that faintly reminded him of a grandmother he was sure he must have had, despite the obvious gaps in his mind. to the right he saw green, mossy stones lining an evident path, and trees overcome with green leaves and swollen berries, the air was crisper this way – he could taste the freshness that the right path took. and yet he still felt torn. 

he took the path to the left, because sentimentality overrides any other emotion – even when you aren’t exactly sure why it was sentimental. and so he walked down the red path, thinking of scorched sugar, almost tasting it on his suddenly hungry tongue. 

for a minute, alexander was sure he remembered a strange man being in his house – a strange man with a black top-hat and an almost-cape. he was tall and booming and he was leaning against the kitchen bench drinking tea out of a mug that alexander was sure he did not own. almost remembered. 

when his legs began to ache, and tiredness stretched out from his bones, clutching onto his flesh and dragging it internally – that was when he thought maybe he should rest for a while. 

as though by magic a house appeared almost instantly over the horizon. a small orange cottage with fields overflowing with lilacs and lilies and daisies. it was quaint and cozy and so familiar that alexander was sure he felt his heartstrings tug.

“hello alex” a voice said, creaking through the silence like an unhinged door.

“hello grandmother,” he replied – of course this is why he was here. of course this was why he had taken the familiar path. he must have been walking to his grandmothers on purpose. he must have been. how foolish he was to forget. 

she ushered him inside, almost as though he was a sheep that constantly needed to be herded. it was unlike him, his grandmother thought – he was normally so bright, so intelligent and so independent, and now he was running on an empty tank with a mind set in only one gear – forward. but she shrugged it off as she pushed him towards the isolated dining room table. she was tugging his coat off his back, and pushing tea towards him in a matter of seconds. and alexander was letting his eyes wander over everything. that clock, oh he knew that clock – of course he did, how could he have forgotten – he was sure he hadn’t. his mind was erasing everything that it had already erased. 

“how is your mother?” the grandmother had asked, and alexander had replied with “she is very well, thankyou.” but now the more that he thought about it, the more he wasn’t so sure his answer was very truthful. there was still a tall dark man in a very tall top-hat lingering in the back of his mind, and where had that man gotten his mug, when it definitely didn’t belong there. 

soon alexander found himself in a bed that he knew he once slept in, and his mind felt like it was breaking out of it’s shell. it was creaking and groaning and swelling where it once never dwelled. he was remembering what colour his bedroom really was, and he was remembering how his mother took her tea, and how he had a dog named buster. 

and then he heard the clock on the wall strike midnight and he was running from his bed as fast as he could. he ran back through the kitchen, past the empty tea-set and past his sleeping grandmother. and he was running down the autumn stained path until he hit the fork in the road – and he ran home. he ran home with all the force of the world propelling every step that he took. his heart swelled with fear, with terrified, horrible, ugly fear – not for himself, but for his mother – his mother who he turned and walked away from, sitting in the kitchen beside a tall dark man, with a top hat, and an almost-cape. 

week two;

manners.

she packed the sandwiches first, followed by the apples and the small bottles of sparkling water – before filling every gap she could manage with small biscuits. she smiled as she flipped the top of the basket down, and shrugged her cardigan across her shoulders. she’d been looking forward to today for the past two years of her eight year life-span, nothing could dampen the chipper mood she felt rock her core.

she waved goodbye to her mother, whose eyes barely left the pool of other children swarming around her ankles – and took the disgruntled hiss that left her mouth, as a very happy goodbye. she kissed the very top of her kitten’s head, and she patted the dog with a little too much enthusiasm, and she walked down the winding path that she had found on her sixth birthday.

when she had asked her mother on that very day, she had a look of danger in her eyes.

oh bonnie no. that path leads to the very middle of a very dark wood, and in the darkening shadows the children of goblins play – they play and they don’t play very nice. promise me, promise me you will never walk down that path. children should never walk that way alone. and bonnie had agreed. no children should ever walk that way alone.

she turned eight that day. eight and in her own mind, she was no longer a child – she felt a cling of adulthood tugging at her childish plaits, untying them and letting her long hair flow effortlessly in the wind. she was no longer a child, and she was ready – she could feel it. she would meet the goblin children, and nobody could stop her.

she hadn’t bothered with a coat, and she wondered if that was a mistake. but it was too late to turn back now. the trees were crowding above her head, and the smell of the forest flooded her body like a wave of happiness. she’d never felt this way before. she’d never felt this happy tied in between the four small walls, too full with dirty children. there was a freedom outside that you could never clasp when you couldn’t be there. but she was here now.

she thought she heard a rumble of laughter, and her legs stopped moving instinctively. she thought about staring into the trees to pick out the goblin-eyes, but instead she stared at her feet. her white stockings were grey with dust and her scuffed shoes were muddy down the sides. she felt uncomfortable, but even more than that – she felt invisible.

she was staring down when the first of the goblin children came out, and it was lucky too, that they missed her – so small and so innocent that they all just flittered past her without looking twice.

they came in pairs and clusters of three, normally. small ugly little creatures. and the final in this very trio was small, almost as small as bonnie, but his nose was good. and he swore, oh how he swore on the very life of his nose that he could smell apples, and pears, and roast-beef sandwiches – but his brothers would never believe him. and so they carried on, never noticing the small girl with the basket of apple biscuits and pears and roast-beef sandwiches.

she kept walking after that, unafraid – marching along without looking back at the small house that poked out of the back of the forest. she kept walking until she came to an opening. a large clearing in a perfect circle, where the trees seemed to bow outwards, away from her – like she was their master and they were all begging for her approval, their heads held high and their arms stretched well above their scalps to promote their height.

she didn’t sit down until she’d pulled the blanket from the top of the basket she was carrying. she set it down elegantly, smoothing the corners out perfectly, in the centre of the shunned circle and she set out the food. there enough for three and she sat back and she waited. she crossed her legs and she reclined into the open misty air and she twiddled her thumbs.

it didn’t take more than five minutes before she heard the sniggering. and then there they were.

goblins don’t really like clothes, and they don’t really like people – that’s why they hide away between the trees and they watch, mainly – they don’t like to be judged by their harsh exterior, or their barbaric mannerisms. they just like to watch people going along their days without any bother. but they also like to play. they like to wrestle and they like to play tennis, but they’re too afraid of people to run onto any open courts.

hello said bonnie, but she hadn’t taken her eyes off the patched quilt she was sitting on. she hadn’t looked directly at the goblins, but she knew they were there. she was a clever girl.

they didn’t respond at first. they took a step towards her, and then a step back and they hesitated. there were two of them, a boy and a girl – lucky, because she had only packed enough food for three.

hello, finally the boy replied. gathering all of his courage. despite the fact that he was significantly taller than the girl sitting in the middle of the parting, he was surprisingly terrified of her.

how do you do, bonnie stood to curtsy to the pair. i’m bonnie.

the pair took another step closer. they could smell the sandwiches and the biscuits and they wanted them. bonnie bowed once again and then sat down again, legs crossed and her palms pressed together in her lap.

it happened slowly and then all at once. they took a single step and suddenly their rough green-tinged toes were touching the quilt and they fell to their knees. grinding them into the ground as their fingers greedily grabbed at the food. they were grubby, and bonnie noticed. she didn’t mean to be rude, but she found herself tutting.

excuse me, she coughed.

they both stared. the girl looked instantly terrified, almost as though her legs were about to take off, no matter what it was that her mouth craved.

you’re not using your manners at all, bonnie shook her head. now first, who are you, and please refrain from rubbing dirt all over the blanket, thankyou. she nodded a blonde wisp of hair back behind her ear, flattening her pale dress against her knees.

they both looked at bonnie like she had stolen the sun. bonnie began to question herself. what had she gotten herself into, what if they didn’t even have manners. she knew nothing of goblins. she only knew what her mother had drilled into her head. she thought, she had just thought that maybe her mother was wrong. maybe they were kind, and just a little shy.

they call me – bonnie lost the word that the boy had spoken, knowing only that it didn’t sound like english, and she surely couldn’t be expected to understand it.
but i heard about a boy named john and i like that name too. the boy looked at his feet, suddenly bashful.

we used to live near water, the girl spoke and it shook bonnie to the core, the beauty in her syllables. so you can call me river.

bonnie grinned wide enough to catch sunlight between her teeth. oh good. oh yes, very good.

they sat in silence now, all too afraid to talk in fear of scaring the others off like they were all timid rabbits in an open field.

bonnie clenched her fingers together once more, staring up between the trees, trying to pick out any more prying eyes before she finally bent to raise her fork. the goblin children were starting. watching her. hungry?

they nodded but they didn’t move. waiting. watching. afraid that their worlds would come crashing down around them. they waited and they watched until bonnie pierced the apple cookie with a force that split it into tiny little chunks. she laughed as she picked a piece up.

it was all over then. the goblins were eating, and so was bonnie and they weren’t really saying anything but they kept making eye contact and they kept laughing and suddenly everything seemed like it was okay again.

i like this said river, as she pulled the sandwich apart, chewing on the roast-beef and tossing the buttered bread aside. tastes a lot better than the children we normally eat.

bonnie laughed, and she hoped that she sensed sarcasm, but she decided to let it slip past anyway.

it wasn’t long before they were all lolling on their backs, soaking in the light like it was their life support, heads all facing in and all feeling the sick prong of over-eating.

john liked pears, and river liked the beef and bonnie liked her friends.

i should go now, stumbled bonnie. she began to try and tidy the mess but soon she realised that most of it had already been consumed by the goblin children. they were strange, and bonnie liked to look at them with her head tilted – just trying to work them out. but she was afraid that maybe she never would. they were mysteries to her, but she was glad that just this once she never listened to her mother.

bonnie curtsied before she left, and watched john fumble forward into a haphazard bow, and river trip over a bent knee and suddenly she felt that strange freedom fill her heart again. she didn’t stop smiling as she walked back to her overcrowded house, and she grinned as she slipped back in the door, once again unnoticed and she sat at the kitchen table and she said.

oh mother, i had the most extraordinary day today, i could get used to being an adult.