15. Waking Up Wrong
I woke inside a thought that wore my coat, keys cold in a door the hallway spoke, the lamp looked guilty for guarding dark, and the floorboards bent like a question mark.
Love, is this the room or the rumour? You touched my sleeve and the sleeve touched back — then the mirror flinched, and the morning cracked.
The dream put boots on, and swaggered to town, bought the dawn with a paper crown, told the rain I was nearly real, then bit my tongue to check I could feel.
Love, was that the wound or the weather? A chair in the corner found a voice it lacked — then the curtain jumped, and the whole house sank.
There's a butterfly asleep in my bloodstream, dreaming me through a stranger's scene, wings like receipts from a half-bought life, paid down in panic, still owed to fright.
Fear's a film that lost its funding, cheap little beast but the music's stunning, all teeth in the trailer, nothing in bed, just next door's cat barking from inside my head.
Love, was that the truth or the theatre? Some frights wear facts like stolen clothes — then the floor let go, and the ceiling rose.
I followed the noise to the edge of the glass, saw tomorrow wearing yesterday's mask, it winked like a witness, then melted through, and left my reflection staring out at you.
Love, am I the sleep or the sleeper? If I'm the dreamer, let me dream you near — where the seam rubs raw, and the waking walks straight through.
16. A Crying Shame
Monday leaks into the pavement,
Rain finds every loose edge.
You stand where the train just left,
Holding a plan that missed its chance.
Salt air lives in your pocket,
From somewhere you meant to be,
Every face keeps shifting shape,
Like it's checking if you're still real.
You inhale like it might help,
Exhale what won't move.
It isn't fault, it isn't fate,
It doesn't ask to be explained,
It's the pause that won't relax,
The weight that stays when words collapse,
You don't dress it up or make a case —
It's such a crying shame.
Friday loosens up the light,
Moon cuts through the grime just right,
A tune spills out a passing door,
Finds a bruise it never knew before.
For a second, shoulders lift,
Like the night might let you slip,
Then it sits back down again,
Same seat, same silence, different train.
You tell yourself you're steady now,
Say it slow, like that's enough.
It isn't anger, isn't loss,
It doesn't beg, it doesn't cost,
It's the echo after sound,
Still hanging out when there's no one around,
You don't chase it, you don't brace —
It's such a crying shame.
Days pass quiet, unannounced,
Still, something keeps its balance.
Distance doesn't drain the feeling,
It just stops it from explaining.
You don't wish for anything,
You don't need a better ending,
You just breathe and let it stay,
Heavy, honest, in the way.
It isn't weakness, isn't pride,
It isn't something time decides,
It's what remains when all is said,
Still pressing gently on your chest,
No disguise, no grand display —
It's such a crying shame.
Just the air between the days,
And such a crying shame.
17. Clean Note
Clean.
So I dragged it through the dust in the chest and left the blood at the lip of the word.
"You missed it"
My thumb touched the chord, and the string said skin.
Skin.
A note holds.
Holds.
Then the snap.
No flesh on the wire, so it never tears.
Mine tears.
There, there.
That.
"The kettle is boiling"
The breath comes too early.
The throat shuts on a name it never got to say — salt behind the teeth, bone under the tongue.
The hand will not keep still, so the chord keeps moving.
Not up.
And down.
Away.
Love — a thread pulled through the rain.
It grips.
Then it screams.
A word gets dressed for leaving then sits back down inside.
"Wrong room"
The seam gave.
The break breathes.
Just after.
There.
While it opens.
While it leaves.
A string holds.
Holds.
Then— I heard myself.
I split.
Sing one word and choke on it.
"That's the one"
Clean note.
I dirtied it.
And it was —
18. The Room
and the light stayed where it landed before anything knew where a door rested open from a hand without
weight
still the clock kept what it was asked and forgot the asking and a coat carrying the shape of something that
dispersed
and the window held the afternoon a little past its time then released it the way things do once the holding
ends
the room just the room
19. Something Simple
Steam spills from the cup, lifting thin twists above the rim.
The first pale stripe of morning rests its elbows on the windowsill.
The clock ticks low, small clicks in the plaster, while dust finds somewhere else to fall.
My back meets the cold wall as the chair gives half a creak.
For once, the hour lets me arrive without dragging my name into view.
And the last day of the week sneaks right through.
It only takes the right faint weight to stop a whole day floating loose.
Warmth comes sideways under the hinge, through the gap where I forgot to guard my truth.
The sore place gives an inch.
Pressure leaves quietly, like air slipping out from a knot in my chest.
Something simple lets me rest.
Nothing bangs for payment.
A laugh bounces off the pavement, bright with rain on its cuff.
It skims the glass, cuts in rough, then lands beside me as though it took the wrong turn gladly.
For a whole breath, I am part of the kerb's wet shine.
Across the street, a tyre slips sideways through shallow water.
Somewhere, someone shuts a gate, and a dog throws sound over the afternoon brickwork.
The tight thing in me forgets its own grip.
It's been a fist so long, even letting go feels like work at first.
The ceiling holds steady without trying to prove the roof.
Floorboards answer my heel as if they knew.
In the grain by the frame, there's a mark I must have missed.
Kindness shifts and sighs quiet as wiring behind the skirting board,
ever carrying me past the worst bend in my private weather.
It only takes the right faint weight where the heart has drifted clear.
A laugh through bad glass can move the moments nearer.
A lamp left low gives the dark something to hold.
A pulse older than I know keeps me moving while gravity unfolds,
ordinary as it goes — and somehow that is where the mercy gets through.
Dusk coats the road in blue-grey cloth.
The doorway keeps its small flame tucked underneath the shade.
I step into the hush with my shadow close behind,
both of us tired, but we're both allowed inside.
The simple thing keeps walking under the floor of the world,
and the room, plain as wood, lets me be heard.
20. The Tenants
You woke up borrowed, like the rest of them.
The body you were given wasn't one you'd choose.
Just weather in the lungs, and a name across the door,
with a clock already running, before anybody told you so.
Small hands first, then the reaching.
Then the long apprenticeship in how to lose.
Nobody sat you down and said, this ends.
You learned it from a dead bird, and when grandma's touch started to shake.
And from the milk left out, with a sweet, sick, sour taste.
So you make the soup, and answer the phone.
And you laugh at the thing that isn't funny,
just to keep a stranger from the cold.
You're the only animal that knows the floor is coming up.
But still, you set the table. Then you wash the cup.
And love the ones who'll leave —
what a stupid, holy, stubborn way to be.
You invented gods, 'cause the dark went quiet.
And somebody had to answer when you called.
Built a flag, a fence, a better tribe than theirs.
Then wept the same salt when they all got small —
Cruel in committee. Tender one to one.
You'd burn a city for a theory,
then stop the car for a cat in the road.
Nobody warned you it would hurt, this much, to want —
You found it in a song at midnight, and in a kitchen, on your own.
You found it leaving messages, to a friend that's gone.
But you make the coffee, and take the call.
And you carry the heavy thing upstairs,
for someone who'll never know you ever did it at all.
You're the only creature that can count the days.
And spends time teaching children how to skim a stone.
Still you sing,
Then fold the clothes, and apologise to the dog —
what a worn, exhausted, beautiful way to go.
From here, you look like static learning how to grieve.
A flicker in a universe, that doesn't notice when you leave —
and yet, and yet, and yet,
you keep the hall light burning for the ones still on the road.
You forgive what cannot pay you back.
You're the joke all other life never got —
you're the rock that woke up, looked around, and chose to love the cold.
So you make the soup, and pour the tea.
You do the small unseen things, that hold the morning up.
And you know the floor is coming. You can hear it underneath.
But still, you set the table. Then you wash the cup.
And love the ones who'll leave —
what a stupid, holy, stubborn way to be.
So go on, set the alarm. Hold the door open for someone.
Mean it, even if you're not sure you do —
the little repeated kindness, that nobody asked of you.
You won't be here for the ending. None of you ever are.
But God, the way you carried it.
The way you carried it, so far.
21. Beyond The Walls
Tyres on tarmac.
A bus changes gear.
Somebody late for somebody.
Somebody nearly here.
I sit where the day runs out,
night pressed flat to the glass.
A brake light bends round the corner,
then gives the road back.
Heard a key in a lock.
A cough at a gate.
Two feet on wet concrete,
trying not to be late.
Life rolls on beyond these walls,
red light, blue light, rain on stone.
I don't need to see it all
to know I'm not alone.
"Not alone."
"Not alone."
A siren climbs at the far end,
sharp as a match in the air.
That sound had a mother.
That sound had a name.
A bed left warm.
A cup gone cold.
A face at a window
trying not to fold.
There's a lover on the phone.
A lad with his hood up,
walking bad news home.
There's a song in a passing car
I nearly know off by heart.
Life rolls on beyond these walls,
wet road, low glow, tyres and stone.
I don't need to hold it all
to feel it holding on.
"Holding on."
"Rolling past."
I have lived in the shape of sound,
where the seen world fades away.
I know a street by its breathing,
know the hour by its weight.
The engine is a shift
nearly done.
The siren is a door
left open.
So sat here behind the wall,
I am one small room within it,
one pulse inside it all.
Life rolls on beyond these walls,
red light, green light, rain on stone.
I don't need to see it all
to know I'm not alone.
"Life rolls on."
"Not alone."
"Rolling past."
A door shuts.
A dog starts.
Two laughs cut the cold in half.
The night lays a hand on mine,
and the road keeps rolling past.
Tyres in the rain.
A bus changes lane,
Somebody late for somebody.
Somebody nearly here.
The road keeps rolling past.
22. The Homestead
Scars that crack like rust — and out of all that dust
we built a homestead from the warmth the winter couldn't waste,
its weathered wood still holding rain
it knew long before it learned the name of shelter.
What fear had bolted shut, the morning eases open,
and the hand that flinched lies easy now —
not healed exactly, only
slowly disowned by the night.
So the good comes close, then holds us less,
and fleeting feelings fold into their shapes of rest,
while memory keeps moving through time's tired test;
the home turns out far wider than its walls suggest,
as wide as one slow breath the living share.
Rust was never the end of the iron —
it only marks the place the air got in,
and ash, once it lifts and forgets the fire it rose from,
learns the lightness of shedding its form.
The self unfastens like a room with its door half-open,
and even grief arrives with its fists full of seed,
so all that fell from us across those wearing years
falls the way a held breath finally leaves the chest.
So the good draws near, then loosens what it holds,
and the feelings that once fled fold softer into rest,
while memory wears thin against time's tired test;
all the while the home stands open as the sky,
as common as the ground that carries everyone.
What we called the self was just a door that wouldn't lock,
and what we called the world came walking through it.
The breath I give away, someone downwind takes,
and the warmth I carry goes looking for a colder hand.
There is no edge left to the homestead now —
it runs from the rust in me to the rain on the farthest hill,
and what was only ever mine turns out to be everyone's,
till the whole of us, somehow, is home.
So the good comes close, then asks for less,
and fleeting feelings fold into their shapes of rest,
while memory moves softer through time's tired test;
the home turns out far wider than its walls suggest,
as wide as one slow breath the living share.
As wide as one slow breath the living share.
And when the dust comes back, the way that dust will always do,
may it find us building, warm against the frost,
breathing one another in
beneath a sky that never once belonged to anyone alone.
23. My Fake Life III
My fake life's ending
A photograph of a moment
I can't remember happening.
I've looked at it so long
the real one stopped arguing.
The actual one's gone.
Nobody's missing it.
They gave me a name at the start.
Wasn't mine.
Wore it thirty odd years
till it grew into the skin
and now you'd have to cut to get it off.
Tell me which part of that was pretend.
The set outlasts the play.
Painted flats, borrowed chairs,
a window opening onto nothing —
and the woman in row three
still crying at something
that isn't there.
Her crying's real.
Ask her.
This is my fake life.
It's the only one that ever turned up.
I built a room with my mouth
and people came in and sat down.
Nothing in it ever happened.
They come back anyway.
There's a bus that isn't a bus.
There's a house that isn't a house.
There's a man in the corner
who's mostly coat and laughter,
looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses,
and he's the one you'd recognise
if I walked past you in town.
I'm the one you'd walk past.
"No music"
A cold cup by my elbow.
Four o'clock leaning through the glass.
All of it invented —
the naming of it, the noticing,
the little story I lay over the top
so the day has somewhere to sit.
Take that away
and there's no day.
There's just weather happening to no body.
This is my fake life.
It turned up. It stayed.
So I'll keep the invented one.
The made-up morning.
The song that never happened
that somebody's playing on a bus right now
with their forehead on the glass.
Pull the curtain back.
There's nothing underneath it.
Only uncertainty,
and the room it makes,
with everybody in it
warm for a minute.
Turn the house lights up.
Look at it.
Sticks and paint and borrowed chairs.
Now tell me it wasn't real.
This is my fake life.
It turned up.
It stayed.
[Whispered, set back in the distance, barely audible]
Like life is fake ha
