brutalist

what do you want? 

i drive to work i dream and then i drive back home. thinking about the last time i saw you
probably at graduation 
graduation was the last time i saw all but three of you
sometimes i feel like i did everyone a disservice. i left everyone behind
and not only that, but i couldn't wait to 

too

you. again. in my head, always there

and now if you got us all in the same room again it truly wouldn't be the same
people are missing already, life is kicking in, 
and here i am, going to work and home again

dreaming of cutting my hours
dropping my lunch on the floor
desperate for a lick of sun
dialling my mum.

what did you want? 

i think i remember your team
i think i remember you in blue
i think i remember you asking me to formal
i think i remember you sitting at the back
i think i remember you had a sister
i think i remember you
i think i remember you
i think 
i think 
i think




(god help me. i am so fucking terrified of luck)

1:58

1. i have always had a short fuse

an easy temper,

and you're too-loud talking, someone who begs to be put on the door,

but then'll buy five beers inside


2. my friends think something of me that makes them look up in the middle of doing a line

and say 'sorry gil'

and i'm like hey it's cool why do you always say that

i shake my head feeling like a narc


3. the universe placed me in a conversation i didn't want

in a position i didn't like. what the hell is going on in that mulled wine pot

and i was taught to attach myself to confidence


4. i sit down to write and nothing comes 

i blame the people too loud in the lounge room

i've got nothing in my head

plague poetry and more

there's a ringing in my ears

or screaming when

'all that,' she said -

perched on the edge of the ottoman -

'all that is just the noise, and then this here is the real stuff.' 

and i leaped from the stage through corridors like a rat

collapsed on the couch in my room

and thought of that. 

i stand close to my parents in the crowd

and the simplest thing is i just miss my friend, a lot,

these people that touch my sides,

they know who you are and who i am and i can't sleep so i'll just sit

hidden a little bit.



i will chase the chaos, i know i will

but i won't sleep for it. or that fucking light that shines through my window

from the apartment next door.



all i take are deep breaths. in the car outside your house

lying in bed in a sweat. gonna be sick all over the place

and i'm so angry over nothing

until i'm not

now you gotta win another one

i told you already. 

i told you on the freeway, with my phone in my lap. i told you in the passenger seat

i told you every time you sat on my couch, every meal we had

i said it again at the midnight diner 

and then again across the shot tower i told you in the shopping mall

in the movie theatre in the bookstore in the late night coffee shop



lean heavy against the wall, speak at 30%

my shoulder my ribs my hip your shoulder your ribs your hip

you said it

you are a completely different person.

and i said yes, i told you already

we sleep in pairs

anything you can do, i can do
anything you can do, i can do 

bleeding and still sit still

with a hideous sickness crawling
under my skin when our skins are touching

and my heart is racing

new doorway is a frame
throw down outside work

"how did we get here? and how do we leave?"

my headphones press my glasses against my face
i'm never alone on public transport anymore


and as for that 
i mean the other thing
you knew just as well as i did

"electric you,"
 

whoever you love, i'm COOL

i thought my heart was done breaking
but cool, finally, leaning over myself
wrapping up a power cord
i realised i will never, ever be the same
and my heart, broken like a twig, 
will never mend the same as it once was

like - i used to catch the train home alone
at 2am
and it was so dangerous and silly but i did it anyway
and i ran home in the dark feeling invincible

i'm not invincible. i never was
i am so unbelievably breakable
one car trip, one sweet night
over wine and i just know forever

this isn't it. and in a second i'm pieces
sit close to me, please, just

book me a cab. you know
everything you want is actually not that far off

i just assume - though, do you want me?
sometimes i wonder if you might.

i would so happily end this absurdity
i would so happily dive into the insane

and quit all my jobs

and write about you for the rest of my life.

i do worry about you, lovely one
and how you cope
and how you remain
so happily displaced

everything is actually fine
you don't have to know

but i fucking swear to god
if you're not choosing me then
she had better be better than me

if you could just see me now, jessica, i think you'd be proud

i hope that i never forget a lot of things

how i didn't know what to do so i just walked

and i had no one to tell but it felt so good

i held it like i could die

i held it like it might get taken away

brunswick st was soaked in gold

and i was so calm 

and i curated it perfectly

i stared at a new wall for 45 minutes

filling the space with airport drop-offs

i'm so in love with that route

i'm so in love with the streetlamps

i'm so in love with the 5am wakeup call

and that hungry midnight kiss

i thought i left limbo there

i thought i left you there

there's nothing i wouldn't do to settle up with heaven

there i was, one last time, 

toe poised above the water (i wanna get better)

when my lungs invert to my stomach and i met the floor

two children in front of me seated at the same piano

while i watched myself disintegrate into brains and a mouth

standing aside like i do in that dream where i'm watching myself walk away from me.

the phone shook violently with your name in big white letters

i felt sick, it felt domestic

i smiled just a little bit

if my heart is idle am i doomed

clomp clomping my fussy way towards you knowing you
were sitting there waiting, for ME,

sickly sickly sick something saying 'remember this sis,
because this will be all you get.' 

and it was!!

but the start was just the best part
primping and preening my outfit
dreaming up the perfect something to say
that'd pin you against the wall

press my palm against your chest and
imagine the pounding inside belonged to me

well there's fuck all i can do about it now, and it's for the best,

urrrrgh isn't it like that for so many things that have happened to me now?
i attract and repel in equal parts, apparently. 

i will say this though, 

there was just something so smug about your stupid elbow on my stupid knee.

i feel sick and i can't forget it


you did this

maybe it's the crazy i like

(every now and again a train goes by

and it reminds me of home)

all my clothes are in bags on the floor

to be honest i cannot be bothered putting them away

i'm in, then out, then in and out again

i buy flowers for myself, think of lorde and leave again

i feel like a teenager, with teenage problems

i walk outside my old uni to catch the tram home

after getting anxious over two glasses of wine, classic...

back then i would've gone home with someone else

leant against their chest and slept blissfully like a child

but i did it alone, for the first time in so many years

found the perfect song to soak my head.

found a pack of men to hide behind.

remember that people love me, remind myself daily

remember to lock the doors

And my friends believe in me too much

i believe that i have already been given all the love i can expect in this lifetime

i have been given more than others, less than some

i keep the pieces in a bag in my wardrobe

and last weekend i had to decide if i should take them with me to my new house

i decided not to, put a note on the bag saying 'please don't throw out,' 

then changed my mind and folded it gently into my suitcase

to sit in someone else's wardrobe for a few more years. 

and exactly what the fuck am i supposed to do with this, 

the only physical proof i have left

that i was loveable, once. maybe twice

flimsy little things that will rot over time, 

and one day i'll have to stop carrying them around

i could throw them out, and i guess i'd be free

but i'd rather be captive

you

walking home with my face half melted i tell myself

write a list of every sign you were given. i tell myself

there's a current that ends at my fingertips

and you're wired different. i tell myself

i fret over my walk, my face, my hair,

soaking up the seconds before i get to see you

(to be honest that feels better than seeing you.) 

but

don't we look nice together?

it's fine if you walk me to the door

i can dream it different

believe that it is

"i'm addicted to remembering, like some idiot oracle."

the summer has not passed like i thought it would, in many ways - but anyway:

an evening in the gardens even though i swore off them
i raised my voice and twenty people came 
three picnic rugs and two christmas champagne bottles

i lay down on my stomach alone at the start, 

took my glasses off and everything oozed into soft focus
'does that happen to you often?' in my notebook
remember the words at which my heart lifted its head
for the first time in a hundred years
and back away again, overflowing

licking paint and how it lingers for days on my hands
kneeling pains and loose-fitting jeans and my thin weak nails
i'm packing up all my clothes, writing those terribly sad piano songs
that no-one really likes, but i like them, and that's enough for now

two middle fingers in the air as i walked out the door on new year's eve
at 11.30PM.

the memories make me sick,
i'm addicted,

but i refuse to go down that way

this will not be the thing that kills me

(that's worrying, that's what that'll be)

Let's sit in absolute silence in a hot car

everything is fine

i am, as normal, crying in the car

driving out of my way to hear the end

filled up with something to preoccupy me

i hate talking about myself 

unless it's about all the things i've fucked up

then we can laugh about it, i do

i am not very interesting. 

i do this, and that's it. 

and if this doesn't work out, 

i don't have a plan b

i prefer the not knowing.

well, happy new year

i know it's stupid

but now you know it, 

and we can forget it

i dreamt that strangers went and filled all your rooms

and i guess now they will