Category: poetry

First

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And with the bright lights churning out their boozy glow,

The bar standing empty, only a glass and a half and a hasty once-over

With an old rag

Voices pecking at other voices, toasts to the untoastworthy

A darting look over at us from a man twice my age

The older couple nearby, tucking into ribs and etching a slippery sauce onto their teeth and chins

It made me hungry.

But my brain was already fizzing from the large white wine spritzer

Which I’d ordered to blend in and be normal.

Dizzying highs and frantic lows, desperately trying not to drop my dignity

But also come across as the most beautiful, most interesting girl you’d ever met

(Oh the pressures of being me)

Out on a Saturday night for once in a blue moon

And I barely looked around me, barely soaked up the atmosphere

Barely present, in the moment, there.

Commuter daze

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We’ve simply swapped newspapers for phones. Eye contact was never there. It never had (or has) a place on whirring locomotives filled with desperate commuters trying not to fall into a piping hot well of small talk and inane conversations. Shuffling feet, iPlayer booming, podcasts streaming, face blushing from the sticky air of the 9-to-5 grind. Days of meetings, handshakes, coffee runs and espresso-coloured panics await us all. There are newspapers flirting with the grimy floors but when the train shudders to a stop and an announcement informs of a fatality, phones become second limbs. Messages spurting out from every medium and endless scrolling keeps the ennui at bay.

Rush hour ramblings

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Pandemonium at Waterloo

At quarter to six.

Desperate, jumping commuters

Juggling briefcases, contents akimbo

Scurry like mice to the platform’s edge.

Scuttling, weak-kneed pensioners are thrown into a gruelling moshpit

Seats are treasures

For the fast and furious

Who tread on toes and elbow ribs and shove handbags

Muffled sorrys

Echo in a room filled with people desperate to get home.

Warbling announcements tell of woeful delays

Heels click, mouths tut, throats yawn.

And then a dash to the train turns into a marathon

Survival of the fittest, else you’ll have to stand.

The horrors of rocking up at Vauxhall

Knowing there’s no space.

Pedestrians left looking lemon-faced, scorned

Like a cruel joke we ride on past.

Me seated, on my way to inhale some jambalaya,

Them standing, wondering when they’ll catch a break.

The same happens at Clapham Junction

And I’m just a little bit sympathetically smug.

Reminiscing

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I thought of that cup

The one I bought from Ikea, all greenly gold and new

The one I drank my morning brew in

The one that saw coffee swish within its China skeleton

Like a dinghy at water park.

My lips fat and swallowing, teeth chinking against the sides

It took us months to get through that giant bag of Costco coffee

The beans floated to the top, never ending

And everyday I’d start my morning with that pastel green cup

Finger my iPad

And wriggle my way into consciousness.

Malas decisiones y arrepentimiento

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Tengo la suerte, la suerte de haber vivido allí

en esa isla contigo, con una red de seguridad

felicidad y comodidad que nunca tendre aquí.

Al menos me parece que la vida es así

que tomamos decisiones que a veces no son buenas

que a veces nos cuestan mucho

que nos roban de unas cosas

y que nos dejan con este gran agujero

de añoranza.

Me está ahogando dentro de su vacío

estoy sofocando debajo de mi decisión

porque te obligué a seguirme

cogí tu mano y no tuviste otro remedio

y ahora estamos, en dos lados diferentes del mundo

tú, admitiendo que nunca te querías ir

y yo, admitiendo que quizá me equivoqué

pero eso no te puedo decir.

Deberías echarme la bronca

porque me lo merezco

te decepciono

cada día que tengo estos pensamientos.

Translation

I’m lucky, lucky to have lived there

on that island with you in a bubble of security

happiness and comfort that I’ll never have here.

At least it seems that way

we make decisions that aren’t always good

that sometimes cost us dearly

that sometimes rob us of things

and that leave us with an abyss

of longing.

The emptiness is drowning me

and my decision is suffocating me

because I forced you to leave

I took your hand and you had no choice

and now here we are, on two opposite sides of the world

you, admitting you never wanted to go

and me, admitting that maybe I made a mistake

I can’t tell you that, though.

You should tell me off

because I deserve it

I’m disappointing you

every day these thoughts come to mind.