they

tell me I am unwilling to listen?

They have ripped out my tongue and shattered my eardrums with thier fists and still I try to listen.

they tell me

I don't respect them?

I dont.

I'm slipping

against a surface of impenetrable unconcern,

that has soul shattering jagged edges

my reality bounces off.

I'm keening,
howled at the moon last night and
I am asking myself
is this my miserable life?

I wont buy into the trap
its a lie and i will let it ride
I am in the wings of a storm

blow it with me friends Blow hard

fill my sails and let me slide again , ride again
to stiller waters sent by god to bath me and caress me.

My reality settles.

I am so tired, unchartered waters and unmapped terrains.

Home is not near.
My heart is so lonely.
My body stopped aching and filled with a cramping agony.
I must be touched soon
or my sanity
is at risk.

Closing her eyes to let the daydream come.The airconditioning unit blew its unrelenting melody in the far corner of her office and the traffic on the Alfreton Road competed with its irregular bass and the occassional timphany of clatter, a trailer maybe.

A luxurious moment of waiting for something imagined to float inside her and reel in her senses with the bait of her desire.

Everything would melt and shift.

She couldn't, shouldn't stay here. In this office where her leadership skills were being sorely tested on a daily basis. So that the softness of her soul had edges like a neglected custard, crusted and cracked and orange.

Where and who would she be? Where would he find her and fearlessly lay his heart into her outstretched hands and whisper a kiss of love in a tingling caress?

Who was he? that he didn't know her already.

She ached with her own and his dafteness and the strain of hiding her feelings in order to take care of his.

Some sigh breathed across an ulcer she could feel forming at her gut and she felt the loneliness prick at her again. Unfathomable. Sad old woman.

Beautiful sad old woman.

When a sigh deepens your breath in readiness for sorrow, its time to stop, unwallow and realign the senses. This she did and the seam between her two selves, one desolate and exhausted , the other focussed and confident, merged, imperceptible.

Yet

dreaming does not leave so easily. Head held high. her eyes closed briefly once again and her lips swelled , lifted, tilted and received his imaginary kiss. Bliss.

Just one second, leaving that slight part on her lips, that tells a stranger that a lover has passed closely by.

There are other edges around her now. Litterings of her life. A mobile phone. Diary, Other peoples business cards, a money off voucher for an expensive spa retreat, keys, keys, a box of tissues. her life has become the generation game and its litter a conveyer belt of things, stuff, edges.

and there are words, notepads, text from old exhibtions, a dairy, business cards, a money off voucher, catalogues, information packs, a white board propped against the desk where hastily scribbled upside down words in green and red and purple and blue hide and protect her from the filing cabinets beyond.

and one drooping very young yucca, dying, always.

a lonely shrug
fell
not alleviating the dullness of the ache

a solitary tear
fell
salting her cheek in readiness to turn

one word
fell
a deafening whisper defeating love

one second
paused
she nearly turned into his arms

Did
not

again