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320 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2016
Remember. Look up. Like the face of god was lighting me through those grilles above, through windows once a church this hall, and old men watch below. Come in. Please go straight to the stage. I snag my skirt on continents of paint chipped out black by toes and heels, by fingers picking clicking for years. I’d do too if I was here. When I’ll be here. Will I be here? Take a moment, they say Then let’s have your first piece. I. Suck antique air and. Go.![]()
From their path I stroll to the City no city, I think to Camden Town. London unspooling itself behind. Traffic all gadding in the midday shine. So many people. So much stone. All at once and streets ahead. I’ll bring it with. I will make myself of life here for life is this place and would be start of mine.![]()
In the white wrenching view I ask How do you feel? Relieved, he says But I can’t quite believe you’re still here. I am though, I say. And even if I feel spaces opening between that neither seem to know how to fill, I know we will. I know I will once I’ve worked out the right distance again.
Then I am back in the world and must understand again how to cover my bones with my skin.
His skin and bones showing the other side of love we’ve arrived at. Not hate. I see it now, and so clearly tonight, that the opposite of love is despair.
From their path I stroll to the City no city, I think to Camden Town. London unspooling itself behind. Traffic all gadding in the midday shine. So many people. So much stone. All at once and streets ahead. I’ll bring it with. I will make myself of life here for life is this place and would be start of mine.
or
Daub my soul with a good few pints til my mouth swings wide with unutterable shite. Laughing lots too, like it’s true.
Strange in its stillness and. Some new thing in me which, if followed, who knows where will lead? When I first came here I wanted the world to look at me and now I might prefer to be the eye instead.
Could I grow up in a night? Grow up in this day? Curled here with him on his small bed, in the cradle of our arms and wrap of our legs watching him deep in his deep dream, far the threat of what he’s been while I lie here, in love. So much and sooner than I thought I’d be. Years off, I’d thought and not like this. But I have come into my kingdom where only pens and pencils were. Abrupt and all abrupt. No longer minnow in the darkness and the deep. Through the portholes and currents I’ve been. Going to the surface. Up into the sun.
Out into the cold sun of morning. I am tired but I am still. That shake of losing him settling itself, becoming what it is. I do not rebel. I have given love its due. Put kindness where it should be. Now we may part in this good memory. I hope he will be happy, that today will not be bad. But now my own clock ticks and turns inside. Go on. Get on. Let your own Juliet in.
Jesus. Jesus he never. Jesus he really did. No teacher Never, nor anyone else. Bang out blatant about going permissive. Noting, I note another face laughing just like me. Trying not. To be mature. To keep the rict from boiling over. Of an age she also seems so I Hello when I'd not usually. Then she, sloe-eyed with slowest smiles, says Cuppa? In the Canteen? And so wriggle in. Slip in. Remember people are blind to under your skin or. Under my skin now.Irish girl on her first day at drama school in London. The teacher tells them to remember to use condoms. She, a virgin still, is both shocked and validated in her desire for new life, new experiences and, starting here, new friends. The sex part will come soon enough (together with an enormous amount of drinking, smoking, and stoning). She meets in a bar an older man, 38, twice her age, an actor too, somewhat well-known, although she does not recognize him. The novel is about that first year of hers in London, not so much about drama school (which disappointed me a little), but a lot about that relationship.
Down down I down to the last flakes in. Dreaming for hours I think in my dream. Over over. Day white tongue teeth. Quickness and slowness. Stilts pander to streets and their up down their. I don't know what I've yet. Wander where no notion wanders in amongst the dust of. Devil may Slip. Then wake up.
I see it now, and so clearly tonight, that the opposite of love is despair.
“Tie up your long hair that the salt drops have wet. Being you have not known the fool’s triumph nor yet nor yet love lost as soon as won. No. That’s wrong. Only won here. Not lost at all.”
But I have come into my kingdom where only pens and pencils were. Abrupt and all abrupt. No longer minnow in the darkness and the deep. Through the portholes and currents I’ve been. Going to the surface. Up into the sun. Touch my own throat. His long arm. Shining like a body come fresh into the light.
I move. Cars move. Stock, it bends light. City opening itself behind. Here's to be for its life is the bite and would be start of mine.
you know
it was too late and
all of a sudden, I was that became
a person who has done the worst thing
is that even a person anymore?
It scares me, I say. I know, I can see. It was a terrible way to behave and way to be in. But looking down on me now, he also looks young and frightened. Together at least in the fear of it. Hedging round the light. Can I touch you? he says then and I cannot think of anything I want more. So go put myself against him. Feel him all around me. I'm sorry, so sorry, he says I can't imagine what it's like for you to hear these things. And what it's like is I've pushed my fingers right through his skin, caught hold of his ribs and must now fall with him. Down through the world while he grasps at everything. But we make the same rattling sound I think. And so keep close together until we are calm. Can let go, finger by finger. Then sit back down. Person looking at person. Like shy and new again.