Daylight

Wavy wisps of hair on my bathroom floor. In chestnut chunks. I cut my hair.

There are a few problems with this scenario.

The headmaster sizes up my grandfather. At eleven, he's a tall lad with fury seeping.
A piece of fury, like thread, peeking out of his coat jacket. If you pull, what woollen heartbreak you'll construct. Warm sweaters. Stiff.

I didn't want to cut my hair. I wanted to start again. I wanted to know I'm not my hair. I wanted to shed. My skins. My skin. My skin. Skin. Skin.

So overwhelmed with this lack. This all-consuming empty. Empty empty. 

I can't believe this vacancy. This utter desert. This empty empty empty.

How hopeless it all seems despite the cotton candy stained coating.
I cling tight to my bed covers. In the winter, the cold winter. 
And I can't believe his indifference. His laughing eyes. His hands. Hands.
I can't believe this deserted pilgrimage. The burns on my hands from the lamp whose light I can't bear to turn off. 

When I know I should turn it off and insist on sleep. Sleep, a piece of carnival coloured in bright reds. 


So, I stand in front of the mirror barely there. I look at the ceiling and wait for my mind's violence to pass. The music is so loud I'm drowned out and erased.
And I pretend I'm a canvas. Stiff and naked and available.
Fill me in.
I have the urge to give up, give in.
Melt my steel resolve and just ask.

Trek the distance, show up incandescent and shaking on some fictional (or real) doorstep and beg. Flash flash.

I won't. I'll just stand here for five more minutes instead.

Because some people are tricky. Some people are obvious broken marionettes who will perform the same tricks.
But there are some broken marionettes who parade around, pretending to be human. And their glazed resolve is rendered offensive, untrue, uncouth. 
We refuse to believe their speech is tailored. We have faith in their spontaneous caricature of feeling.
Then, the static sets in. The pause, the bludgeoning feeling of misalignment. When things don't fit.
And the lacklustre. Apparent in daylight.

Daylight, uncovering the dirt and always on our doorstep. Sooner or later, the daylight.

It's the daylight swallowing the evening's loneliness. Flash flash. 
Swallow up the lonesome girl.
You're not there yet.