Tag: anxiety

BHB

pillow talkerLeave a comment

I nearly bit my tongue off

When you asked me questions

Of no meaning, no substance

Forced like unwanted suggestions

About where to eat, what to do

How to travel, when to move

Staring over the barrel of a deceased coca cola

Eyes ploughing into me like needles

My responses grew weary and feeble

Conversation like too much hard work

From the very start

And tiptoing into the twilight hours

A train ride that should have been hushed

A meal that made me blush

A sentence too many that was more than enough

How can I stand to be me

When a day out is just pain

And I’m the only one to blame

My ineptitudes, my shortcomings

My overactive brain

With its excruciating bubblings.

Someone

pillow talkerLeave a comment

Like someone reading your diary

Touching your thoughts with a scalpel

Splitting them open and letting the innards glow freely

Beneath the blade.

Like someone knowing your darkest secrets

Most troubling defects

And personality problems, character flaws.

Like someone scraping out the inside of your head like a coconut

Amassing all these troubles, all these woes

And picking at your skull like a vulture.

Like someone who read your poetry.

European weekend

pillow talker2 Comments

We rolled into a Spanish town, filled with green crested hills and fluffy neighbourhoods

And I’m thinking about work and life and commitments

I’m pondering the flaky freelance mode de vie,

I’m wondering if it’ll stunt me socially

And make me boring and broke.

As the flesh coloured figures roll past the window panes

And the platforms dash in a blur of brushed aluminium

Thoughts ricochet off my synapses

And flood my mind with what ifs and how to’s

The world seems so scary

My path seems so bumpy

When I make good with my brain

That’s when it’ll all piece together.

Planes, trains and automobiles

pillow talkerLeave a comment

People rush to shove their bags overhead Like a herd of wildebeest and you’re mufasa.

They prance and prowl about in this tiny aisle, knocking you sideways.

Before reaching far-flung corners of the world,

They’ll fling their luggage tags at you,

Run over your big toe

And elbow you in the cheek, arm or collar bone

Without any sort of apology.

Overhead space is like prime real estate

Because we’ve got so much stuff,

So many creams, so many serums,

So many outfits and hair products

A ball of mad capitalism.

Tall, quick-footed parents step over you to claim their space,

Older lemon-faced ladies moan at the lack of legroom,

Children sit scared in their seats and tap away on their Samsungs.

And the stuff piles up, high above our heads,

Weighing us down both here and there.

Sundays are the worst.

pillow talker2 Comments

That choking pre-work anxiety

Creeps in like Sunday doom.

Rain spits at window panes

And boots line up by the front door,

Caked in mud, smothered by weekend walks

And forest frolicking.

That insufferable discomfort

Of wanting to do everything and yet nothing at the same time

Creeps in like Sunday doom.

Hours in front of the TV feel wasteful,

Next to the promises of Instagram’s brunches,

Bottomless, boozy and bubbly –

Outings with the #girls.

Gym trips, sweaty brows,

Abs everywhere you turn

And asses everywhere you swipe.

They swap the cardio for avocado

And weights become waits,

Long ones outside cafés,

Bruising noses up against glossy menus

And fighting for seats beneath rainbow parasols.

Summer Sundays suck

Unless you’re chugging prosecco

And scoffing smashed avo.

When I am home

pillow talkerLeave a comment

I am looking forward to the smoky back-garden haze,

And fog drifting over the horizon in winter.

Home is where I used to hang out of my window on the bluest of moon nights

And shuffle with Chuck Berry and Johnny Cash.

Winter is always the ripest, best, most elegant time of year

Because the ferns all sing sweetly in the breeze

And the rustle of a middle-class life echoes through the town.

Mornings are clad in grey clouds, making Gilmore Girls re-runs oh so inviting,

Sunlight peaks through, emerging from the sky’s womb,

At around 2 o’clock.

This is home to me. I’ve been away for 3 years

And now I’m desperate to find that shelter again.

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.

pillow talkerLeave a comment

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.

pillow talkerLeave a comment

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.

Sixteen.

pillow talkerLeave a comment

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?

Stuff.

pillow talkerLeave a comment

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.