shall we try again? xxx

She is like a cat in the dark, and then she is the darkness.

She stops to try and remember old routes, following the crack in the wall to where it meets the green and then she runs.

Walking alongside her you know her well but she still tries to hide. Under layers of black you begin to lose sight of her until she's gone.

Now you're lost.

We've been here before, but this time, its just me.

A game of consequences

Patrick was a stocky type of a man. One with a kind face and a warm heart. He met his best friend on a boating trip back in 1986. A dropped oar turned slowly into a quiet friendship- punctuated with letters, drawings and newspaper clippings about natural marvels.
Patrick didn't make friends too easily.
He found it hard to give his heart to people, he didnt know what would be left for himself if he did. Too often did he turn back around rather then keep going, always cutting his hair instead of letting it grow.

One spring Patrick and Michael, tired of daily routines and silence decided to see some of the world. It was a simple affair, the type where you get on the bus at your doorstep and don't get off until you reach your destination.

Michael used to tell me the story at least once a week, i would listen as if it was always the first time.

A soundtrack to a holiday. For that week only it was 1969 again....

tiny hearts breaking like muffled church bells. Bread turning stale on the counter. Hands held loosely under tables. And Michael, just a child, watching his grandfather sick with cancer.
A summer spent with the curtains drawn, a summer not to be remembered fondly.

A tin of travel sweets that sat by a chair remain untouched, the sunday visits carried on. Money under carpet tiles in the dining room next to a small wooden cupboard full of condiments and freshly polished shoes by the fireplace. A long space full of somebody else's things, rooms that belonged to other people, rooms that you can't even be sure if they existed anymore.

Michael telling me stories. In Whitby, along the curve of the coast, i felt his quiet shame as his brother pushed his face into the mud. I saw his eyes, white and open against the dirt, his knees pulled up tight behind the dustbin.
I heard his mother calling him to dinner, and felt his half grown body rocking back and forth in the rain. We watched the sea pull itself back, like an intake of breath,
Michael telling me stories.

Draw a Portrait of Hayley (if she had very long hair)

Sorry it's so bad. Faces and general bodies have never been my strong point.

Write something about home.Don't use the names of any of the places you've lived.

Playing the victim
For far too long

A gold coloured box that once made music
Now whirs and clunks and stops.

Remembering teeth,
hairpins,
dress hooks,
pins and buttons.
Laid out like bodies in a graveyard
Laid out dead in the sun
Pins in the backs of woodlice
A psychological warning ignored
Waiting always for dad to get home from work
Always waiting for dad to come home.

Write a poem about Derby. Don't use the word Derby, or any words beginning with s.

May.

Running risks and growing up fast.

Concrete benches and grassy knolls. Endless days that never turned into night.

Pointless memories.

That was the happiest time.

Home was a place to grow from and not look back. Routines to be broken and faces to forget.

I left it all on the bench we always used to go to, by the river.

I took back the necklace, it was the first.

For Hayley

Looking longingly out of windows and sitting in our assigned positions.

This is me and this is you.

I sit and watch whilst your thread catches to build up words.

Engulfed by wool. You look content.

This is you.

Cuts and scratches on bare skin. Empty pages and tired thoughts.

This is me.

Looking forwards and never back. This can be us.

For Siobhan

The things you tried to bury
Won't sleep like you want them to.
It's an exhausting way to live,
Trees still grow when your eyes are closed
It's the hardest thing.

At night
A conversation between strangers plays out softly.
Her voice over his,
Over yours over mine
Words like tiny fists dig themselves up

It starts and it takes a little longer to fall asleep
The trees still grow in the garden

New Flat Drawings

The Tree of New Beginnings

WHAT I LEFT BEHIND