izzy

There’s a little window on the corner of the website with a live feed to a psychic and this ruddy-faced chubby man is looking at his hands, confused, like he’s not sure how he ended up inside such a tiny pixellated fragment of my computer screen. I’m looking at our relationship compatibility based on an astrological reading because I can’t sleep. I think the real skill in astrology isn’t in being right, it’s in shaping words vaguely enough that they can be true of anyone – you apply it yourself and of course it makes sense. I don’t know if I believe in it, but it always seems true. I guess they just have a way with words. Either way, it forces me to clarify what I really think about stuff – if I look at it and I’m like ‘nah, no WAY!’ then I at least know how I feel about it. I feel right now like this guy can see out of his little window on my screen and he is looking at me because he’s pushing his square thin-rimmed silver specs up his red nose and his sweaty palms are patting down his silver ponytail and he’s peering right on in, I can see the screen’s light reflected in his glasses. It’s terrifying to think he can see me here, wide-eyed from lack of sleep. I scramble out of the page and look up a buzzfeed of reasons that babies are just tiny drunk people so I can laugh and feel like I’m the one watching, not the one being watched. Later, with my laptop’s glow illuminating the crazy shapes and textures of the wallpaper on the ceiling I think about your face on my screen and how you said when I was lying in a particular way it reminded you of lying next to me in the dark in the bush, with my face just centimetres from yours. I think about how it’s an optical illusion, and actually my face is thousands of kilometres away, even though it seems so close. I tell you about how when you were sad a week or so ago I almost reached out and touched your face to try and make you feel better but then I stopped myself just in time when I realised you were only light on this screen and I couldn’t reach into the screen to touch you. I click over to an opinion piece about Beliebers. Part of me wants to go back and ask the psychic if he thinks babies are just tiny drunk humans because I think he would probably come up with a really interesting response to that.

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sarah

When I am dead and sprayed across the sky like a cloud of gnats
(Don’t you dare even think of putting me in the ground
I wanna be as burnt as the soup that I made
The time when you said ‘You should check that it hasn’t boiled dry’,
And I said ‘Conversely, we could fuck instead’)
I’m gonna circle around the world a few times
Check in on the pyramids at Giza
Give a wave to the Parthenon
Suss out the Pope
Do all the tourism I never got round to
(And let’s face it, could never afford)
And then, once I’ve seen the Northern Lights in a crystal clear sky
(I’ll be the dust spot in everyone’s photos)
I’m gonna come right on back and fall at your feet
Just when you step out of the shower
And you won’t notice until you’re getting into bed
Sitting half-naked, with your shoulders all pink
And you’ll look at the dirt on your steamy warm toes
And you’ll think about going and washing it off
But you’ll sigh (let’s not pretend that you’re something you’re not)
And you’ll crawl into bed and smear me across your sheets
And you’ll make a mental note to wash them tomorrow
But you won’t (and, my god, I will love you for that)
And I’ll spend heady nights pressed against your skin
Drowning in your smell and your big bellow breath
And when finally you shake your sheets out in the sun
I’ll swarm like a beehive, stretch out in the air
And then settle once more on your bathroom floor tiles
And for the rest of your life (and love, may it be long)
You will never stop wondering why there’s dust on your feet

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