an Exercise in Words

She wraps writing round her as though if she tries hard enough the words will embed their selves onto her body, layer by layer, letter by letter, till her skin is blackened with dusty ink in 'love finds no loss's and 'once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl who fell in love with a beautiful boy and they overcame their enemies with their kindness and love and lived together happily forever's because even she knows that every once in a while happy endings exist. In time and space and even if it's just an eye for an eye it's still there, so it still counts.

She likes to think.

She does like to think, but sometimes thinking for thinking's sake drowns her in its depths and she wishes- she cries- she screams out and sucks it all back in again because no one is allowed to hear- no one would have heard anyway- no one- because they liked to pretend. And pretense- oh, pretense is devilish and maybe it would leave someone else gleaming with tears but for her tears were always a messy and unwanted affair, so she kept them tightly packed beneath her eyelids, burning them away with dazzling fires of scorching boys, liquid evaporating before it had the chance to slip down her cheeks like some kind of sorry.

Tears are for the bad girls, for the ones that make stupid mistakes for stupid boys dreaming of stupid things, and she was always smart so she looped in and out of the lines occasionally. She'd bend and study the ground like words could touch them too and see if there really were lines, endless boundaries, to see if she could feel them, if they could shock her the way electricity does when one sees the one they love. When one stands in a storm and is hit by lightning. When one suffers macro shots and lives for electrocution.

Was she ever a dreamer? She was always right, and logic wasn't for people who thrived on daydreams anyway, right?

She's built on contrasts, ups and downs and "The opposite of war isn't peace!" and a girl exclaiming, "What is?" because in the end "It's creation" and everyone screams but no one used to but everything does and maybe she used to do it at night when no one could hear (except they liked to pretend) but eventually it's all or nothing and maybe she just likes making no sense.

Ab
  So
    Lute
       Ly
None.

And maybe everyone else likes it that way too, because gos if she could make sense, the tales of woe, of such that they would hear! Even if she could make sense, such feeble, selfish minds wouldn't be able to comprehend the extent of these, of why these things even matter but everything matters at some point in life, don't they?

Yes.

No.

Maybe.

Why should she know, anyway?

--

He lives life like a time warp, switching and changing and neverever loving. He's a cynic, a critic, a traitor and he never wanted to grow up but five years of to-go coffee cups have worn him down and out and he's stuck willing all the bad words he's ever said to go away.

He only fell in love once, and maybe it was karma when she moved away, leaving him behind to grow up and his sisters had left and his father is sick and his mum hates his guts.
He's tried to stop giving her reasons to, but he just can't seem to stop.

Poetry burns in his throat but letters get caught on the tip of his tongue, announcing ineloquence, leaving him paralysed, speechless, desire turning him feverish for ways in which to express himself.

He tries too hard to conceal his every thought and feeling from everyone he knows and therein lies the problem: with every emotion wiped from his face and stolen from his tongue, he is unfamiliar with how to express himself. Difficulty is not his strong point and if they said ignorance is bliss maybe he can pretend he's perfect anyway. He dreams in perfection and plans to live in it, too, so really, is this not merely practice?

He just needs to learn how to speak. He begs for words and yet remains speechless. He is cut up and torn down and all that remains are dusty cells and burnished blood; leaking

Drip
                                          By
                                                                                      Drip
It makes him sick.

--

She loved the word graceless. Graceless, cease and desist, no grace and no ful and no way of linking the two together to become a charming graceful, just grace, just less, just much less, and a word that took her away like leaves on a wind that hurricanes do challenge.

Words and

Words and

Words and

She drowns in them.

And therefore instead of dreaming she sits in the pool of words and thinks. Analyses. If logic can't help, what can? She thinks of anything she has to because her words alone aren't enough. She thinks of ways to see without eyes, to communicate without speech, to write without watching, love without caring, live without breathing.

She is at once lyrical and unpoetic and she despairs over her generation of identicals waxing frivolous over not caring what other people think, foolish over never judging anyone. Pretense, and this time she knows because they preen and primp themselves in the mirror and wrinkle their noses when someone doesn't wear several brand names at once.

Brands, to brand. Branding an animal. Branding a person; wanting a person so much- loving a person so much-

A privilege she has yet to experience.

--

Eventually she extricates the words from his mouth and he lives his perfection as she is whittled down by madness and obsessive yearning. When she leaves him for bright lights he searches for new love, a new lease of life.

Perfection crumbles and he runs to you, like you always knew he would, and he scratches his emotion out on you until you are a heavy tome, pages dripping in ink. You are illegible and therefore unattainable and when you have reached that stage you remind him of her.

He throws you at the wall and picks you back up again and tucks you into his pocket so that he knows you'll be there, like she isn't. He asks you if you remember her scalding touch and you do, pale fingers reaching for you, handing you over; a gift.

Sometimes she dreams of him, and when you are too filled with words to make any consecutive sense you are pushed into an envelope and sent away.

Her yearning for grace is ongoing and tears touch you like his never did.

In the battle of words, the writer never wins.

--

She wishes to listen. To something deep and pure and heartfelt, something that makes her brain race like it wants to win.

She tries to listen. Instead she hears the girls waxing lyrical about nothing, anything- their everything. Stupid things like love – something she'd die for except she'd never experienced it- well, she had-

But it had been shaky and it hurt and sometimes it covers her whole like a duvet on a bed, smothering her with heaviness, undeniable to those who have felt it before: it weighs a little like passion, mixed with base notes of love and top notes of confusion and fear and lonely, relentless dwelling…

Love was ice piercing the veins on her neck and her insistent thoughts of him blocked her arteries like cholesterol. He was her sickness and was known to rather often stop her heart and steal her breath, the thief.

She loved him (loves?) more than is imaginable, chills coming and going but his cool touch always lingering.

Sometimes she writes poetry on her fingers and blows him a kiss in the direction of his city, her old one. Sometimes when where did our love go? reverberates round her head she likes to think he'd done the same, transmitted this message just to her.

Sometimes, she breaks down and begs for him to find her.

Sometimes, she breaks down and begs for him.

Sometimes, she breaks down and begs.

Sometimes, she breaks down.

Sometimes, she--