tanyawritesthings

[tanyawritesthings]

Hospital green - that shade of green that

never quite reaches the calm

it intends to,

muted but not mute

it envelops the room in a

low-pitch white noise;

stale atmosphere of every breath taken in

through each other’s lungs until there’s

no oxygen;

problems hung out to air like

dirty old laundry, ropes

twisting the arms of the figures

with sheet-pale faces into passivity.

Between the calm and calamity

lies

our captivity.

[tanyawritesthings]

Tragedy: two equally legitimate opposing forces,

neither choice

meaningful, but one has to be made

daily, hourly,

with every breath that you take.

Light a cigarette;

smoke makes air more palatable.

Ashes on bare skin

would cover you soft like a blanket,

if you sit there long enough,

perfectly still.

Imagine being invisible!

Breaking the spell just for a moment

you glance inside,

notice

a small pot on the windowsill

in it - a shrinking violet,

so perfect still not so long ago

and now – dying,

slowly, silently, and not at all beautifully.

And you want to destroy it for being so small

and breakable in so human a way; it’s funny that you don’t remember tears being hot,

absurdly so,

scalding,

face seething with the wet, messy, sloppy, emotion

but you can’t be mad at something

that won’t survive till the dawn.

“Kill yourself or face the absurd.”

As if both weren’t an option.

[tanyawritesthings]

A sonnet about adulting

Adulthood was intoxicating for the first 3 hours; the next 3 years you spent hungover and prostrated on the floor, remembering event after event:

a pitch-black sky formed of amorphous shapes weighs upon you, nightmarish visions of before that seem too present to escape, and inexplicably impossible

to contend with as they float silently and weave themselves into the quilt of Time in permanence, and you fail to extract sense from the matter, and reason from rhyme,

What’s left to do to clear the static fog? The universe would say “hair of the dog”.

[tanyawritesthings]

“Colour me yellow”

Colour me yellow –

the yellow of the not-quite-sunset glow,

dust mixing with sunlight in a tiny stuffy room -the world never seemed as vast as on those afternoons –

the days somehow seemed longer, and perhaps they were, perhaps it was summer, I can’t be quite sure.

Colour me yellow - the yellow of autumns spent climbing trees up into the sky, falling down, bruised knees, bruises that never quite healed appeared on your skin like small galaxies, marking the shock of the impact of having collided with this earth at full speed.

Colour me yellow - the yellow of Moscow markets’ June, the taste of those not-quite-ripe melons from Khasakstan

still on the tip of your tongue - the sourness of never-forget.

Colour me yellow - the yellow of making dandelion chains – yours never turned out quite right - unbreakable bonds with people you’ve only just met.

Colour me yellow - the yellow of clumsily constructed bonfires, smiles shared with strangers and friends, teeth coloured by the cheap coffee you’d drink,

Astounded at people who slept with no regrets for a world that slips by so curiously.

Colour me yellow

- the yellow of artificial light, reading-torch under covers, hunched over pages, looking for answers to all the hows and your whys always hungry for more.

Colour me yellow - the yellow of before.

[tanyawritesthings]

“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire”

“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire” Bukowski once said.

I don’t. 

Fire clocks me,   I stand and gaze at where I came        from,

mesmerised by the flames, 

I look at the stretch of the road behind me,  and the     glimpse of a        future,

feet glued to the ground

and  d r o w n i n g  in the    chemicals...

Gasolina burn well...    I am warm  and almost        too faint to remember the burning flesh smell.

Besides, what does it matter what    Bukowski once                          said?

The guy’s dead.

Go to hell.

[tanyawritesthings]

To Paris

I loved you in a tongue that wasn’t mine. I loved the pace I couldn’t quite keep up with from the start,

Manoeuvring my racing heart through customs, “Pardon” escaped my breathless lungs a few too many times - the remnants of my Englishness a crime met not with your approbation but with

A perfect nonchalance.

I loved you on the RER from Charles de Gaulle to Gare du Nord while reading “Paris, France” by Gertrude Stein;

A moment’s perfect transience captured in broken lines, her words so foreign and familiar at once.

I loved you stepping off the train into uncharted territory of faux-pas,

a whirlwind of a moment’s stillness sweeping the group from under my feet again.

I found my bearing in the Imparfait, laden with nostalgia for places I dare not yet call mine.

I loved your certain je ne sais quoi - to use a crudely borrowed phrase,

in constant limbo between strange and non-belonging I felt so small and glad to disappear into the haze of night.

You were always perfect, and so was I,

for I loved you in a tongue that wasn’t mine.

[tanyawritesthings]

“The Perfect Metaphor”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath

as I bring hesitant hand to blank paper,

Promise ruined by

A drop of ink of my fountain pen.

I watch it drop, amorphous, ill-defined, borderless, limitless, purposeless…

I am scared of its permanence.

Now it’s a pool, black and perfectly still. I throw in my fishing rod and watch a ripple run through it like the tight string of the world’s smallest violin snapping back.

And I get nothing. A distant echo of thoughts once thought, perhaps.

No reflections; the mirror-lake is far too obscured, as if shattered into a million molecules, and, being pulled back together by an unknown force, it never quite settles.

No answers surface. Or in any case none that don’t necessitate more questions, and I don’t want to open that can of worms. Not again.

Iam that can of worms. I am fish bait and yet I am surprised at the catch; wanting for prey, I am shocked to see flesh torn apart by my own merciless teeth.

[tanyawritesthings]

***

Stepping into the town that is not mine and soon to-be and once-was hers I feel like a sheep in fog.

The echoed dullness of this cobble-verse, the cracking of that beat-old chair, insiders cackling as they conspired with the dead who got inside my head and made me wish I were there with them,

or anywhere but me and here.

But then the rather frosty welcome of a December morning grew on me and built a home among those brittle bones…

I lodged with the old masters not knowing who they were, and skeletons of things past brought comfort to me.

I dined in dusty libraries and devoured old, stuffy men like air, and choked, and swallowed anyway.

I strolled among the ancient pharaohs’ tombs, then almost-leisurely, counting the artefacts and blessings.

On an October afternoon a mausoleum of thoughts I wished to build (or to become?) closed in on me

and left me in the dark I’ve learned to fall in love with shapes by candle light.

Stepping in to this town that once was mine, I yearned to be at one with dust, alone forgotten in the past.

[tanyawritesthings]

“Your Sexuality Does Not Define You: A Poem”

I have an annoying habit

of never deleting my search history, I guess for the viewing pleasure of whoever happens to be interested in it.

Today, for instance, I spent the afternoon watching videos like “Are You A Baby Dyke”, an interactive quiz, and angry poetry entitled “Dear Straight People”…

all against the social backdrop of “Your sexuality does not define you.”

“Your sexuality does not define you.” I’d like to say it’s true, but my mother’s “I’ll pray for you” screams otherwise: It’s a redefining of me in her eyes, as much as I’d love to drop the disguise of the years I spent torn

between a plain smile and a storm tears in a teacup

between “I knew all along” and a shock so blistering I swear it could skin me alive;

between the days spent soul-searching (well, Tumblr-searching) and playing hide-and-seek with myself (and I always win);

between pride swelling so for up in my chest I almost forget about the shame and the shame which plunges me into a well of loneliness;

between holding my girlfriend’s hand and “Do you have to do this in front of my kids?”

between “to kiss” and “not to kiss”, -no, I am not prince Hamlet! I don’t do dilemmas. Or I shouldn’t have to.

“Your sexuality does not define you.” That’s because your sexuality does not require a definition, clean-cut straight lines black-on-white letters imprinted into the core of our being. No need to be defined. not a toe out of line,

whereas I can’t quite wrap my head around my feelings.

Coming out feels like a sick pantomime, I’m seeing double, two sides of the same coin - next time I toss it, perhaps I’ll get lucky,

see a silver lining, or turn a circle into a dice, roll it - test my chances.

But before we get to see a cloudless sky here, or someone invents a square circle, or a flip-switch for the ignorant minds,

I will continue walking through this tepid hellfire rather than stop letting my sexuality define me.

May 2018

[tanyawritesthings]

“Skirts: a poem of admiration for my ex”

I’d never seen this girl in skirts

outside of school

(our navy suits looked

awkwardly our of place with trousers, 

so we conformed and wore our skirts

with laddered tights or knee-socks,

and braved red-coloured clips in

untamed hair,

not yet weighed down by hefty blazers, 

but shivering in jumpers in the late

September air,

young schoolgirls that we were

without a single care.

We went to different schools for six form. 

Both expected to wear business-casual attire,

we wore our jeans and T-shirts when we could,

and had no desire to wear a skirt again, 

except, apparently, on dates.

That day, I took the 108 bus to North Greenwich

(with Oyster cards still being free, 

and the O2 being the half-way point between our 

homes).

She took the 386, which was late

(as I remember, it was always late) - 

shockingly unpunctual, just like her,

and I was waiting in the depot, 

shivering to the bone, when I saw

a figure in a skirt

with a hemline much shorter than we’d dared to sport

back in our schooldays

jump off the bus,

panting, and hair, though significantly 

shorter, still dishevelled,

and cheeks as rosy as that

shade of pale gets.

She wore a skirt with laddered

tights as remnants of old days

(admittedly, her skirt had not been tumble-dried

but neatly pressed),

and seeing my surprise, 

she smiled and said,

“I wanted to look good 

for you”,

“Besides, you’re wearing a skirt, too”

and that was certainly true.

I hugged her close against

the cold September air,

and kissed her cherry-carmex lips,

and held her mittened hand,

and at that moment, as the 386

drove off, tailing the arriving 108,

I felt so perfectly content,

without a single care.

November 12th 2018