her leg ached a cunty unoaked red the same old shit her teeth and the map of the sore bits in her teeth pulsing like a lava lamp throwing muses jarring into her aural space like broken glass arbitrary measures this wee orange pulse off and on the neighbours thrumming the floorboards like a wooden ruler on the desk old metaphors deracinated afloat in the end times drinking wine spodyody

the slow descent after a day of violence being able to think to hear the whir and hiss of things the crack of her knuckles to feel the knots in her guts as the tension began to release even this door slamming but less aggressively soft now in the aftermath of it like a bruise like pulp aching all over and tired but no longer screaming so that she knew she was tired she knew she was sore she knew she had been assaulted and that this was unfair and then sad like the day after her rape when she hadn’t had the sheer panic to protect her from what had happened and picking bits of skin from her flaky brows and finding it under her nails her headphones wrapped in an old sock and finding a glass of water and drinking it and the little pile of rolled up balls of snot on the arm of her chair and the empty blister pack all popped like bubble wrap and typing e for r with her broken middle finger but it was late too late to epilate this wan state of exhaustion then sleep closing in like curtains sinking in it like mud and clawing for something real her smashed shin her fear of morning trans day of visibility

all and fuck all the handbag she’d bought for another birthday flopped over on one side scratched underneath like feet breaking everything she looked at walls and bridges the future was history a slab of pink cake a key rattling in a lock the smell from the open window and the smell for which she’d opened it her ring her pills a scissor the end of the playlist

lit like a keyboard like candles from inside or underneath or something waiting for her carrot cake too shy to ask the police helicopter passing overhead her red gums a roll of metallic purple washi tape the fear of the dark the night of the neighbours the front door the street a house in the new town afraid of the hot bed and its weighty sheets and blankets of her own ankles that itched of the morning that would surely come and hélène then quoting gurdjieff and her lip peeling like rice porridge and the wind pulling at her skirts and the cold and marigold tea and honey and birthday shopping having invited herself this odd sock her sweater an almanac a dented cup and her favourite song then from her favourite record by her favourite artist and all the people she missed and all the people she missed because they were dead and doors slamming songs that fit and songs that didn’t there was always next week until there wasn’t these two postcards of the same scene the rattling on the walls her battered dreams her threadbare socks a clutch of purple freesia hung up to dry a jar of coins a few quid splintered into pennies

she kept telling them uploading documents the castle the trial amerika till she ran out of money another gessen with her last tenner learning how to be fucked her kate spade handbag the colour of wine hardware the colour of gold будущего нет a carton of oat milk her scarred fingers an old friend a conversation about her unwashed amigurumi with someone she’d only met and strangers coming out to her on the subway a cough dry poisonous the end of the world forgetting about the screening and watching them back to back before the deadline again knowing she was no loss to anyone mourning herself in advance disobeying in advance an ice shelf splintering like a thermos on contact with humanity like her heart her shin like ideologies on contact with their implementaion the yarvinistas the putinistas blue labour numbers on a chart on a cake on days nouns countable and uncountable sexed this way and that in one language or another pronouns in any crooked head

hot and bothered a glass of water in a drying puddle sore under her ribs a wee cry better out than in these piles of accumulated clutter some old records in a box for someone not quite dead yet and this jug of dead flowers and the cords she used when she couldn’t find her flogger a pack of dead batteries the noise the end of side two the shuttered window the crick in her neck the desespoir not forgetting for long anymore always a presence to her and her toenails that cut her toes and the beach at ciboure these rubber bands a bottle of hearts a red ribbon with a little bell her wind chimes and the memory of the gifter of her wind chimes upside down some hard machine the itch in the crack of her arse qui vivrait verrait

all morning moving it around here and there like masha dodging the rain drops the weft and weave like a jenny through gentle beams of insipid milky light the sun quivering naked behind clouds of cotton a cloth robe the blue bath of the sky showing her boobs in golden flashes splashing her soft yellow curds into the room like guano and having to get up and move the thing again and eating too much junk and having a headache from too much coffee and too many seizures and the blue bruises on her pink thighs tearing the skin from the wet palm of her flogging hand running it across her face now the oily film of yesterday not yet cleansed and replaced these rubber bands different sizes her handbag and her plushie in her pocket she’d missed it by a hot minute another in five red red purple a little sparrow on the parapet like a tiny gargoyle poking the grey air that filled the space like a gas which it was and the muddy building and the half hearted trees swaying listlessly in the supine wind neither girl nor boy ishtar’s descent into the underworld pointless slay this forced smile of a day with its gunmetal shadow of wings now folding across the greasy scope of her kitchen window tepid like an english baudelaire

wet dreams and dry lips these buffoons devoid yet of adulting skills and trying her patience the hot night the closed windows the vinegar smell of the shower its vague new cleanness pondered on the heavy chaleur like a half remembered air tentative fragile the drilling of engines in the dark beyond and the glass sat there empty on the dirty table a plate a bowl chopsticks dried flowers a bag of piss bottles her watch dingin at her the envelope almost square fragile all over in red and a paper bag also red with a little monkey in the middle it was only april the blanket tossed to one side birthday shopping her pink socks her torn nightie remembering the sales girl who’d been kind a pink sheet like the baby’s milk that time and that awful red powder and kicking his little feet and having to be the bad guy a mint green bath towel a pair of butterscotch

she had nothing to say the endless violence the violence of indifference all of her time consumed by coping with her environment the noise at the window like the zombie apocalypse which it was the end of days these fucking idiots with a sea of plastic in each hand gratifying their dopamine addictions like rats and the trees bearing it lime green piss green leaf green brat green and then the red buildings and the steel buildings and the plastic fucking burning buildings and the pissing rain full of plastic through the plastic windows and the just the fucking shameless violence fucking shameless and this endless indifferent all consuming consumption not even to be happy only to keep fucking swiping on the infinity scroll of endless need like a leaky pitcher a hedonocracy inhuman not agents only bodies only reflexes impulses buttons and their pushing wired for fuck all just to need pushed again pushed and needing pushed the remaining two modes of human existence and wanting to just burn it all down and let it die which it was

the smell the nausea every sunday incomprehensible emerging from the afternoon hum like bugs from shit this girl parked a yard from the side of the road with her music thudding like war comparisons with things that had literally happened yet intended to shock whining haters selfish idiots bleach and tomatoes olive oil and balsamic a stump of baguette sinking a glass of chalky languedoc crying and wishing she were dead listening to stella still feeling shit swaddled in her old yellow cardigan wishing she were dead again the endless violence the way he’d leered at her tits covered in bruises swiping the housework walking to the supermarket walking back putting things in cupboards fridges ovens eating and shitting choking on it a stillness a bird on the crumbling stone parapet in the faltering sunset her leg was sore blinking this yellow candle the taste in her filmy glass of water a scissor a bunch of crap marychain speed

sex four o’clock birdsong the sun shafting sideways across the window sill cars hot in the fecund capitulations between summer and spring a rocket overhead a ley in the stone and steel green like electricity swarming in dandelion floof may queens chirping in the street below soiling their knickers for a tuppence and two thruppenny bits her stomach filled already with biscuits gurgling at the oven already stretching out the flowers on her dress broderie anglais pink and full of holes as was the dress she killed herself no literally