Insomnia
Movement from the corner of my eye distracts me from a fictional world. The mouse has found a forgotten morsel. It tries to nudge the scrap to the depth and safety of its home. Sensing me watching, it flees empty-handed.
After the lights go out and my head finds the pillow, I can hear the scratching sound of rodents crawling under my bed. On my desk. Through my carpet.
I switch on the light.
They’re gone.
Sleep doesn’t come. I wait for a sound, knowing that it’s coming. I can feel them crawling on my skin. Little feet and tails make prickly progress up my legs, up my spine. I roll and thrash under the covers. They’re too fast. Clapping my hands and snapping my fingers banishes them to hidden recesses. As sleep finally begins to take hold, they re-emerge.
They’re so hungry.
I give up on sleep and sit, torch in hand. All I ever see is a flash of brown. Maybe. But I hear the groans and the creaks and the hisses. I know they’re waiting for me to leave them in peace. Waiting to claim their space.
Well, I can be patient too.
The Night Forgets
The night was cold and the beer was warm. She allowed the gibbous moon to light the living room as sobriety slowly waned, pausing on the rim of the empty bottle. With grazed knuckles, clawing fingernails and the smell of desperation fading from her mind, she allowed the leather of the chair to form around her relaxing body. Her heart, calm now, beat steadily against bruised ribs.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It didn’t leap at the defeated scream from the garden as it had the first time.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She reached for another bottle as the cry trailed away and the moon became hidden by cloud. From the darkening room, she peered into the yard. The dark vanishes surrounding forest. It blurs the body into the grass. It transforms bright red gore into grey nothingness.
She sipped her drink and let the night forget about her crimes.
A Million Hyperbolic Thoughts
I gave up on lying in bed
With a hyperactive mind.
I started to write a poem
Before remembering:
I can’t really write poetry
That isn’t rambling and disjointed.
So now I’m lying here,
Thinking about time and space
And where, if anywhere, I fit.
It’s frightening.
Double Exit
When he decided that the time had come, 17 year old Uri approached his conservative parents with the news. He watched ashen faces yield to gravity and listened to the sharp intake of breath. After overcoming the initial shock, they hugged him and promised that they’d be there for him. No matter what. Soon after, he confessed. He wasn’t gay. He was a heterosexual boy who just wanted the ‘coming-out’ experience. They were less understanding.
Liar
She said, ‘I love how direct you are.’
I said, ‘I don’t feel like talking.’
She didn’t like that.
Student Life
Seventeen straight years of formal education had equipped him reasonably well for life. What he wasn’t prepared for was the crushing weight of boredom and inadequacy that unemployment brought.
Different Sides
It was my final day teaching in a small school not far from the city. A student from my class, the top of her head barely reaching the bottom of my ribcage, approached my desk with her hands behind her back and a classmate by her side. The friend was brought along to compensate for her own shyness, and as she held out a small parcel the other child called, ‘Open it, Mr D! Open it! It’s for you!’ I thanked her for the offering and examined the hand-folded paper cube which offered a different image on each side: a sketch of the school, a three-planet solar system, a face with thumb-tacks for eyes (which I suspected was a highly abstract representation of me) and messages of thanks. When I opened the package to find a small ceramic clownfish among the ceramic tentacles of a sea anemone, I masked my initial confusion about the bizarre gift with appreciative noises and comments. I asked her why she had chosen this, but she shrugged her shoulders, avoided eye contact and went outside for lunch. I left the school gates for the last time that afternoon with something which I had never before possessed: a statue of a small, brightly coloured fish.
Among the Ferns
I don’t know when I decided to remove my shoes. It was as though I’d always been barefoot among the ferns, the walking trail far out of sight. As the dry breeze gently rearranged the shirt on my shoulders, I dug my feet deeper into the leaf-litter, not knowing whether the sharp jolts were caused by twigs or fangs. Not caring. Any afternoon sun that managed to penetrate the canopy had been diminished along its passage. I barely felt its warmth on my neck. Then I laced my shoes and walked home to watch television, because I was insane.
Long Overdue
Where am I?
Multi-coloured shapes stretch blurredly through faint shafts of light that change form as I blink away unconsciousness. My watery eyes regain focus before my brain, and I initially fail to recognise the rows of books on grey metal shelves as belonging to a library. As my mind clears and that simple realisation hits, I notice the pain in the back of my head and realise that the sharp corner of a hardcover book is burrowing through my coarse hair. I sit up and the pain subsides, lingering dully.
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