NaPoWriMo: Day twenty

It was in the red cabin, the one by the lake, that he finally started talking. For  nine days he had done nothing but write and rewrite, piling paper high around him, remaking a forest filled with descriptions of sunlight, rivers and the feathers of owls. After so long in silence, so long without the company of his own voice what came out of his mouth was the loudest whisper he had ever heard. He was standing on the beach looking over the silver water, knelt down and ran his fingers over the stones

“Loneliness is a strange thing. It cannot be cured by merely surrounding oneself with people. In fact that is when I’ve felt the most alone. The only cure is to find someone, anyone who will break off pieces of themselves, as you do the same, until you are both a collection of shared memory, living statues built to honour each other.”

He walked back to the house, hands still wet with moonlight and cold water, unlocked the back room and finally opened the chest, the one the ghosts had given him in exchange for the stack of poems he left by the fire. He crawled inside, gathered the pieces of himself that still knew how to sleep peaceful and dreamt of a single word…

Home.

NaPoWriMo: Day nineteen

There was a yellow room across the street from mine

The light was always on

At least whenever I looked

But I never saw anybody live there

So to me

That was the flat where every character from my imagination could live

The current residents include:

Five superheroes

Two murderers

Three beautiful women

One happy couple that look almost familiar

Four musicians

Six poets

A talking owl

A bear in love with the moon

A group of about eight foxes that go fishing with ghosts

The ghosts they go fishing with (who all look suspiciously like Bill Murray)

Thirty hummingbirds

A dragon who hordes typewriters

And a version of me capable of meeting such things.

NaPoWriMo: Day eighteen

There are some nights

When I listen to those songs

The ones that stretch past my windows and soundtrack the world

That I swear I can hear your voice.

Thankfully those nights don’t come around much anymore

But still on those nights

When I feel the emptiness of the room

I can still hear your name in my sighs.

NaPoWriMo: Day seventeen

Fresh melon with basil leaves and mozzarella

White wine, IPAs, fresh orange and other fruit juices

Lemons floating in ice water

Pasta

Bird song

The family sitting in the sun

Talking about nothing

Laughing at almost anything

Falling back into the old ways

Reclining like life here was a chair

The one your dad and his dad and his dad sat in

There is history in every wrinkle and fault line

Here the stories are curled up thick around our feet and snoring loudly

This is summer lunch at home

Tonight there will be whisky

with no ‘e’ (yes this is important)

And talking about bats and stargazing

While sat round a fire

Pine smoke billowing into the sky

The only music being the crack of glowing logs

And the hum of our words.

I would not have it

Any other way.

NaPoWriMo: Day sixteen

She will forever be trees and models of birds

They were porcelain

And on the day she left forever

The branch of the woodpecker broke

But the bird still held on tight

She was mother to my mother

And you can hear her song in my mother’s eyes some days

Sometimes it is a happy violin hopping branches and fluttering through sunlight

Sometimes it is a blues song

All brass and sorrow

Those days are fewer and further in between now

But they still happen.

This is for my grandmother

Queen of feathers and forest breezes

When you look at us from wherever heaven may be

I hope you smile

I hope you dance like your laugh always told us you could

Grandmother you will always have a place in our home

That goes beyond photographs

And for what you did in life

And for the stories you left in death

There is no other words

But thank you

Dear grandmother

Thank you.

NaPoWriMo: Day fifteen

I don’t believe in fortune telling

No tarot cards

No astrology

No reading bones

No tea leaves

I do believe in the future

But that’s based on past experience

To be honest

The present is just too wide

For me to look around

And too tall for me to look over it

And I’m pretty sure if I tried to dig under it

I’d find myself buried under the weight of time I was missing

So forget trying to see the future

I’m still pushing forward

But the present isn’t going anywhere

So I guess I’ll have to go through it

I’m going on a future hunt

And I’ve got a feeling

It’s going to be a big one.

NaPoWriMo: Day fourteen

These are the things that make me happy:

1. The smell of wet stone and grass
2. Thunderstorms that can shake the foundations of even the most solid house
3. Good parents and grandparents that make their kids and grandkids laugh and learn not caring about the world around them
4. As a British man…the sun
5. Cooking
6. Cute pictures of dogs or cats
7. Lazy days doing nothing but writing and cloud watching
8. The ocean. Maybe it is the feeling of being small or maybe it is the sound of a planet whispering to itself.
9. Learning about weird creatures while David Attenborourgh narrates
10. The knowledge that in this world there are people who love me and there are people who I love and that number will only grow.

NaPoWriMo: Day thirteen

She was big and showing now

Her man had nicknamed her Galactus

Said she looked like she was carrying the weight of a planet

And had never been more beautiful

And she laughed as he lifted their grey cat around her

Her own silver surfer

They ran their hands across her belly

Whispered whatever names popped into each other’s heads

He looked at her filled with life

Closed his eyes and lay his head against her shoulder

She hummed softly

Running hands through his hair and along the world she was creating

All was right in the world

This was the moment.

She opened the chest on the coffee table with a foot

Breathed deep

And folded the entire room into the chest

Pinned it in place with the seagull feathers she kept in an old book of poems

Then she shut the lid

A first gift for the new world they would all inhabit.

NaPoWriMo: Day twelve

When he was younger

About 6

He ran round the back of his house

Opened up the light blue shed at the back

Stepped lightly around the spider webs and bags of wood.

In here he was myth

Something magical and rare

He let himself grow and shrink with his breathing in the dim light

He took the chest off the top shelf

The small one made of hard wood and semi rusted metal

Taking the key from around his neck he opened it like he did every day

This was his ritual

To stare at it

But today would be his last look

He shut everything quickly

Ran all the way to the forest

Amongst the trees he hid it

Buried his chest deep into the black mud

Amongst the smell of rain and pine.

NaPoWriMo: Day eleven

You were always the kind of person to make ashtrays of glasses

Rather than smoke over a ledge or let ash fall in a designated place

A bowl

Or even a cardboard cup

Instead you let the ghosts of cigarettes gather in wine glasses.

I wonder if the ghosts that dance around your dreams

Have to wait for you to smoke

Before they get their own to drag

Leaning over your bed narrating all the noises you make in your sleep

Like they were clues to finding ghost treasure

Out in the woods

All the ghost men wear suits and old hats

Drive fifties cars through the forest and dig under headlights

They find the chest you buried when you were six

Break the lock

And shake hands over their discovery…