An awkward conversation.

There was a dull chill in the air, a handful of stars in the sky. Her skin had taken on a pale defence to the night's weather, and yet still she sighed contentedly. She must've been sat on this mound for around four hours, more or less. Her legs had become slightly numb, but she needn't have realised for lack of movement.
"You don't always come here, do you?", Came a sultry Voice without intention, as though it had always been there.
"Well... no", she replied rather obviously, glancing downward slightly to the mound on which she sat.
"Oh", came the Voice once more, as though expecting much more of an answer, "Well... You aren't planning on leaving?".
"No actually", she replied wistfully, her colourless eyes fixed upon the few stars and the lack-lustre blue beyond it.
"Well it won't go away..." came the Voice, now seating itself beside her, though she paid it no attention, "That is to say, it won't come back? Well you know, that, that down there... it won't go away, but, the thing that it was, well... it's... gone. Yes. Quite gone".
"Aren't you supposed to be a little more... informed on this matter?", the girl asked quite naturally.
There was a pause after this, in which the Voice sat quite calmly at her side, imitating the girl's glance toward the stars. It shifted it's weight upon the earth now and then, and applied itself to an itch upon it's arm, but otherwise it was rather still.
"It just becomes a little bit of all the same... if you follow?", the Voice queried as an unidentifiable bird swept past heavily with one lift of it's wings.
"I don't I'm afraid. I'd of only assumed you were here to offer me something".
"Offer you something?", the Voice's velvety slithering tone took on a slight crackle.
"Well yes, advice, a choice, an offer, an exchange... Is that not how the stories go? The stories I had read as a child...".
"Well that should tell you it all! You were a child when you read them, things have changed", the Voice came with a classic huff, had it have bothered moving it would certainly have folded it's arms and turned it's head at this point. But it's ancient-tones shared enough.
"I am eighteen years old. And these stories have been passed to my school from the Greek times. I do enjoy reading you know", the girl maintained her wistful tone, her eyes ever upon the blues and silvers of the night.
"Well... do you not suppose you should be at home, reading then? There is not a sweeter way to mourn than to read into another view of life that you only wished was yours!".

Her expression did not change, but she said no more. A desperate and rolling cry came from somewhere nearby, of which the Voice assumed to be that recently passed large bird. It ceased, and the general clatter and scurrying of the middle of the night (which It was so very used to) became clear once more.
The Voice rolled it's hands around one another slowly, and glanced back to the mound on which they were sat. The girl had slightly sunken into the fresh mound of earth, having been sat on it for so long. Little tufts of grass from either side of the mound were poking through and swaying in the breezeless eve, and the stone of which the mound leant slightly against glistened silently and still in the silver glare of the moon. It looked alone, and for the briefest of moments, the Voice felt rather sorry for the girl. But it passed, as it always had done.
"Look", came the Voice once again, after a long quiet, "I didn't mean what I said, I suppose, well... you know... you've got that job at that bar and... well, don't you just get irritated when customers tell you how to do your job? Not to say you're a customer... Or even a client, I mean, this is different...".
The girl looked slightly toward the Voice, and sighed. He really was mumbling on about nothing, and with her view on life as it currently was, she was aware that she no longer had time for such rambling.

"Suppose I were to just stay here with you", the Voice's classic tone said later, "Suppose I never bothered others again, nor stalked the night, nor exchanged anything or made any deals..."
"Have you not collecting to do?".
The Voice went to reply, but for the first time in history, was politely interrupted.
"Excuse me for stating, but in all the stories, in all the books and the unwritten legends... you are rather important. You are feared so much as you are necassary, or something along those lines. If I were to grant you to sit beside me forever, mourning upon my loved one whom you did not even know, I would not, in some twisted and strange way, be doing the earth any favours".
"But I'd be doing you a favour", It said rather simply.
"But you do not grant favours, you only exchange them. And any way, I never asked for any company tonight, I was quite happy to be sat upon this heap alone. Thank you".
"It is only a dog you know...".
"I beg your pardon?".
"No... no, I didn't mean that either, I know it's a human. I apologise. That was uncalled for". The Voice began to wring it's hands again, referring it's glance to the mound and the stone. "I suppose we could carry on arguing though? For quite some time?".
"You really dislike your job, do you not?", the girl asked the Voice, pushing her feet comfortably into the disturbed earth.
"Yes. Quite.", Came the Voice.

~

Unedited.

And indebted.

And to what do I owe,
This beauty that has surrounded my waking hours of late,
The nightmares that lay in the resting hours laugh!
Yes, the words that surround me are of different voice,
Now my familiarity,
The world at my window now that of crisp, clear horizons,
Of the new, the west and exciting.
What power has given me what I once dreamt of,
Only to taunt at sleep, to claim that I owe?

''Oh hopelessness, oh loneliness, to search the ends of time''.
It sings, so quietly in the back of my mind,
It lay undisturbed, long gone in green light.
How might I go about clearing it, the dwelling and the dust?
What has nuzzled into my vein today is sweet and harmonious,
What lingers from before bitter, and alone.
Still i feel the clutching fingers, not cold, but slick and of grease,
I attempt reconnecting with the world before me,
It laughs behind my back and wills me to join it.

When you have lived a life, in the dark of the back street,
In the dim of a room well hidden by bed sheet,
The moon a beacon with vendetta;
To have a light, so graceful, not white,
Appear before you,
In welcome, in slight appreciation, in wanting of you,
You must owe.
There must be a force that has worked out a click in the pattern,
Has mis-stitched too late,
Has moved the stars ever so slightly,
So that you may indeed be granted a life like the other,
And you must owe.


The photographs of my loved ones must be stored for today,
I feel a slight shame in their gaze,
For here is the girl, who sort of disapeared,
And, really, was found too late.

It must be grey.

I should think you mighty,
To come and to challenge me,
So don't,
And simply be beside me.
Have you ever a question for me?

I am aware of tear stained cheeks,
We have both witnessed,
Such colour,
In dusks simple transaction.
Like winter lasting longer.

I have made you up a room,
The walls all rather pale,
To rest,
You must lay your head somewhere near mine.
The birds here sing all night.

Waking is a scent in itself,
And realisation is the sweestest follow,
Remember me,
The crow will caw before the dawn.
And I have been awake most of the night.

Should I fall prey to sleep,
Below the hollow tree in the garden,
Gentle quiet,
And day time's birds.
I expect your challenge withdrawn upon waking.

To be read quietly.

And I shall live now,
As I always intended upon living,
For I have taken fresh air,
Into lungs that had just fluttered out the old,
And threatened upon me something dire and unthought,
And as I sit now, chest once again peacefully heaving,
The crow caws at my back door.
And some where far, the sparrows hum.

Now it is I, who am able to read and speak,
To dance and walk,
To be and be with,
To be pleased and to please.
For life is able, and only as I make it.
For it I, who was standing in my way before,
And no other.

Give in now, to the passions that have stepped beside me,
And lead them. Lead them to the brushes, to the strokes,
Oh, of which I seek beauty in.
Find me, by sand and by pavement,
By cobble and by book,
To the scent of home,
And the trickle of tea.

I am to be me.
And finally, me.

~

Note to this - I just came over very queer, a couple of hours reading and suddenly air seemed to flutter into my heart, a tremble down my throat, my quivering lungs. I ran to take air from the breeze in the garden. Unlike any anxiety, for now I breathe clearly and my head pain is gone. So near to the next seven years, have I been reborn?
To be read quietly.

Sink.

In my garden, this morning, a black bird and his partner sqaubble.
She is closer to the tree itself, she is crouched and determined.
So close upon edge, tremble does the branch, he may take flight as he wish!

Immediate, self and other fear. Have I not the being to simply just be,
And here! I stroll casual, and here! I stumble dramatically.
Possibility and I rise to an occasion like he! They quote, and they snigger.
I am prey, and I attempt to hunt.
And bloom around me, does the threat.

There is water at my feet,
And so I sink in slowly.
Echo, is the dull thud of dripping,
Damp are the walls I attempt cling to.
And so simply, I release my back,
I feel the bones in my body slip apart,
Numb become my arms and my eyes vacant to a trembling scene.
A dull, quivering blue that holds me, weightless and quiet,
I wait and it does pass.
I come closer to a surface.
Unreligious and cleansed.
A form I am not familiar with is the self I, for my life span, refused to see.
Delicate is the skin, now young,
And straight is the hair that falls.


Gazing back, I find the garden tree bare.
And I hear the magpie scream.