Author: pillow talker

female poet writing about adulthood and the masks we wear

Hello, eternal lover.

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He pushes his hair out of his eyes and grins. I’ve got Ketchup smeared over my chin.

A noodle ran amok and painted a pretty picture on my face.

Lunch is the best time of the day, I’m like a lioness ready to pounce.

A juicy gazelle smothered in sauce, a side of nachos, dripping with honey-laced pulled pork,

Sits before me. I feel my mouth water.

I’ve come to the conclusion, and am willing to accept,

That I am (how shall I put it?) engaging in a steamy love affair,

With food.

Feed me and you’ll have me in your pocket.

Polly pocket pig rocket,

Exploding and oinking in oodles of pleasure and zesty grunts. Roll me in sour cream and let’s have ourselves a party.

Lunch and dinner may be the highlights of my day (is that sad?)…

Saucy noodles can use my face as a canvas for all I care,

And sticky doughnut sugar can brush against my lips and tease my tongue.

Cheese can slide down my throat, fatty and unforgiving,

Choke my arteries. (If I can’t see it then it mustn’t be true, right?)

I’ll dump shrimp carcasses, burger lettuce and pizza crusts in the bin,

But food will never dump me.

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.

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Today on Gran Canaria, it rained something fierce.

Blouses and trousers shook on the clothes lines and were left sodden, stretched and hanging.

I prayed for them not to break loose and fly away. Knickers would be strewn across the pavement, bras caught on flag poles next to a sea of red and yellow and socks crouching in dirt-ridden gutters. Thankfully the pegs stood strong.

Children came to school with giant overcoats and umbrellas, ready for an indoor break time and the rescheduling of after-school stuff. They said their match was cancelled, so why wasn’t English?

I couldn’t really explain why.

The Irish Goodbye.

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On the day of my departure, I spotted a corner in her bedroom and thought about what might happen if I stayed there. Lurking, hiding, tugging at the duvet with nimble fingertips… the corner looked so comfortable, so peaceful. Shrouded beneath micro-fibres and cat hairs which always flutter up my nose and make my chest wheeze, I could stay there and not have to go back. The life of an expat isn’t always so rosy when you’re headed for a country you wish you hadn’t ventured to in the first place. And as you feel your body being shoved hard in one direction, you start to dig your heels into the ground and that corner, that tiny, honeycomb crevice of carpet and dead skin suddenly looks so appealing… The same thing happened at Disneyland. I was on my year abroad and hating every second. A moment’s joy came in the form of a weekend break to Disneyland Paris and I found myself staring at another corner (this time in a bathroom) and wondering what would happen if I just stayed there, curled up like a kitten… and never went back to my desk job. Strange, isn’t it? How corners and small spaces seem to offer comfort in dark times, beckoning me in with open arms and clutching me to their simple bosom. Safe spaces are lovely and inviting, but in a similar vein to comfort zones, nothing grows inside them.

Instaddict.

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Slumped on the couch like a wrinkled potato, thumb reaches for the light beside. Boredom is a curious thing; one thing they don’t tell you about working in the evenings is how monotonous the mornings become. Still slumbering at sunrise means I miss the birds singing and the engines burping their dreary sludge into the atmosphere. Trying to become best friends with my alarm clock is an arduous affair. When 10am rolls around I haul myself out of my pit, eyes squeezed like two jam doughnuts and legs like jelly, I am faced with a wall of nothing. To do lists seem are no good, the boredom still creeps in. Productivity stunted, brain turned soft like marshmallow, I reach for my phone and scroll scroll scroll.

Sixteen.

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I’m trying to remember what I was like at sixteen.
Hair flat, nails worn, a thick shell weighing heavily down on my back,
I fell in love with a rockstar with thick, tousled locks and tight, leather pants.
He was better than any boy I’d gazed at, any boy whom I’d written to on MSN.
That callous green icon flickering.

My students aren’t like sixteen year olds.
Immaculately groomed, nails chiselled, no shell displayed on their backs,
I shudder when I’m with them, hunch when I’m explaining,
Confused gazes litter the air,
And smirks and faces smacking of apathy.

But they are sixteen, that ripe old age,
When Sixteen Candles and Pretty In Pink should be a staple.
And me?
I withered like a flower in front of adults,
I retreated back into my shell in class,
(Don’t. Make. Me. Read)
I self-flagellated any chance I got,
And still do.

Where is my confidence? Am I lacking some crucial brain component?
I’ll soon be turning a quarter of a century.
So why do these sixteen year olds intimidate me?

Hotel buffet blues 

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At the start of every day

I say

I’m going to be a vegetarian. 

But then one sweaty Sunday

A hotel buffet calls,

Rows of striped bacon, fluffy eggs

And spongey sausages which flutter 

Down my gullet…

I saunter up for a third helping

Delights piled high on the plate,

A leaning tower of meaty Pisa.

Let’s stuff ourselves to the brim

More so now than we’ve ever done 

Because it’s free of course,

Gotta get that dollar’s worth

Even though the bacon fat

Will choke our hearts. 

Thirteen glasses of orange juice 

And a bucket of coffee later

I’m nauseatingly full.

With a ketchup-stained mouth

And greasy fingers

I swear not to do it again

Hotel buffets are a blessing and a curse

For those with never-ending stomachs. 

Stuff.

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With oodles of stuff greasing our palms

The charcoal children across the pond look on enviously.

Candle holders, glitter bralets, pasty camera lenses

Stuff pours from the crevices of the West.

I sit at my computer, bug-eyed in front of Primark hauls

Poundland hauls, bikini hauls

This is what I bought, this is how it looks

But all this stuff is made by dirt-ridden, miniature fingers

In dingy factories, sordid and dim-lit.

Half the world is overflowing with stuff

While the other half is dying.

And yet I’ll continue to sit here watching people unwrap packages, boxes, food parcels and useless objects ’til the cows come home. Purchases which make no sense, purchases which are unnecessary and make me wonder why we yearn for SO. MUCH. STUFF. Is it just our generation? Are we just a product of capitalism? The puppets in its sour show? Online shopping makes us green with envy and purple with desire. Wallets wide open, money flaunted and egos stroked. Yet, across the pond there are people dying of starvation,  crippled by wars and dictatorships. These are people who struggle to find clean water and a decent meal, who would give anything to be fighting the crowds in Primark instead of fighting to survive, ducking from bombs, dodging injustice, and squirming at the corruption which lies so blatantly within their lands. These are the same people who are responsible for crafting the products we pay through the nose for, and yet barely a penny reaches them. We show the world what we’ve bought and how much we’ve paid, failing to acknowledge how we came to acquire it and who was instructed to make it. It’s disgusting and mind-numbing when you finally realise how messed up everything is.

 

The Gran Canarian heat

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The Gran Canarian heat has me sprawled across the stony floor like a starfish.

Pores open, chest red from sunburn,

Three showers a day is a common occurrence.

Deodorant stick runs frighteningly low,

Armpits stagnant after a hard day’s labour,

Teaching the youth of today and tomorrow.

Donning long sleeves to look presentable, more business-like, like I belong,

The fabric only clings to my fruity skin.

Famous for our lack of air conditioning,

Parents implore we purchase more fans to keep their children’s brows free from sweat,

But even when they’re blasting, and kids

With snotty-noses and grotty fingers brush their fingers along the tables,

We’re still roasting like English potatoes.

The day I got pummelled by a wave 

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The waves crash around my ankles in a desperate display of purple fury
Each and every one poised for a destructive landing

A very violet sandstorm. 

Wading in to be whipped, my body tenses

Feet tapping and drifting away from the ocean’s disgruntled bed

One of them finds me, sizes me up, and then punches my body with its crackling foam

Knocked onto the sand, bikini bursts and breasts fall open 

I bounce from grain to grain, submerged and breathless, au bout de souffle, 

Steadying myself, my feet fight with the monstrous current

Metres from the shore feels like miles.

Boob readjusted, wedgie loosened, the sea retreats and oxygen invades

I stumble out of the deathly surf like a drunken banshee woman

Withering like a rose, wobbling like jelly. 

Surf’s down

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We went to a place yesterday. Where human whales flopped over beach chairs, sunburnt tourists fanned themselves with Daily Mail up-turned cones and bright beams of light fell from the sky. I so desperately wanted to be the Beach Boys’ surfer girl, tousled dirty blonde hair falling all over a speckled back and shiny shoulder blades, wading into the water’s waves and knocking them sideways with my board. But of course, I didn’t dare rent a board. Oh no, anxiety would not allow it. Think of all those people who will watch and stare as you mount, fall and wrestle with the wind when trying to transport said item from shop to shore. The beady eyes upon you, eyeing up your belly fat, your thigh wobbles, your hunched shoulders and your worried pupils darting from sand to sky from sand to sky in a super-tense flurry. Instead I watched the others paddle with all their might and come crashing down beneath the slippery surf foam, colliding with kiddies occasionally, muffling apologies and eyes turning red from their salty playground. I tried it for about ten minutes, but was knocked off and pulled under the weight of the board. Anxiety crept up and choked me, I wondered who had seen, whether they’d laughed, cracked a smile or simply not cared. I assumed the former, not the latter, and returned the board to the others, too nervous and self-conscious to continue. Unable to practise, do, say or try something new, anxiety’s grip seems to have turned into more of a strangle, and this frightens me more than the cowardly beast herself.