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.

Our Day Will Come.

The nights are sweet, in other rooms and between our beds,

Not a sight familiar, not a permanent chair,

I've washed my hair in several showers,

We've attempted dining at all sorts of tables.

But of course each object melts in comparison,

To my strong image of you.

I made myself sleep this morning, I dreamt and was aware, I woke and refused to give in. Back into the dream, it took me to other worlds, it swept me up and attempted to drift me out to sea, it took sun from any sky and put hate in the voices of others. Oh it threatened me with faces and long gone places, but I slept. And this time, I woke when I wished to have woke.

Yes, as I swung my legs round the bed, I collapsed to the floor on a numb leg, but all the pain of yesterday and the rest of today has been beautifully worth it. Not long, I keep on, not long here again. Only I find it hard to picture my kitchen, my wallpaper, these days. And I've never really been one for 'seeing to believe' in the physical world.

Too awkward to kick back, to uncomfortable to fall asleep on the sofa, I wait with tense bones by the window - not for winter to pass - but for my season to guide me to my next destination. Perhaps make a home, oh can I even?

Am I scarred and unable to settle, is it just the new I seek now, now that I never pitched camp?

Keep the future painted with accents of a past I never had, it would do me well to actually drive on with it all. Is it that I have waited too long, that in the porch of next year, I long to just step in and not wait a second more? Am I angry and impatient, oh patience of 10 years! Patience! What am I now, that I've never known impatience?

Nothing manages to freeze over in the city, I see no glittering webs and dusted hedges?

The leaves do not crunch here, the sludge slipped in with the rubbish just slips -

I have waited so long.

Do not let it just be words! They can be the fuel, they can tie us together, oh they can slip into physicality but if I ever stopped talking just for a day, would I crumble in your eyes?

And yes, how I stop myself, and yes how I hesitate! I disgrace my own wants and knock on my own front door!

I've much to pull through to,

And much that I want to,

It's you in every mirror, in every photograph, in every suit! It's you,

And it will be tomorrow, I can be tomorrow!

So let it be today, dear body, let it!

I've needed all of this,

I've need, fed and swam into!

I remember being told - both in the morn'.

I remember treading carefully through the snow,

Rocks turned over, twigs peered through,

Leaves lining the trail of foot and paw.

I will be joyous again.

Our day will come.

''Something I cannot, can see me''.

An aged story.


Will I spend my life doing this?
Taking on the old information as if new?

I heard the trees anger last night,
As alll that filled the 4am streets was my own whisper,
Ordinarily.
The rest that filled the silence was suddenly all collapture.
To look above me,
My footsteps ended,
Paused, and slotted into the cobbles.

The damp road an empty stage to the rustling and the breaking above me,
I could almost trace the sound with my eyes,
It moved around as if some thing on all fours ran-a-mock on the tree tops,
Beneath the shielded moon.
I was a build up,
A tension.
And I waited for something to drop,
As I spied a star through the mess of leaves.

Some of autumn, some clinging onto what was left of the weather,
I waited.
Surely a branch would have stopped breaking?
But the sound of ripping bark and clattering leaves progressed,
An orchestra building up,
"Something I cannot, can see me".
Was tonight, my ordinary night, The night?
For all the shredding, the grinding rips,
Nothing fell on the floor.

But I waited, I even stepped into the dark from the lamp's light,
Directly beneath the sound, willing it to test me.
But perhaps I wanted it too much that night,
Or maybe I wasn't truly fearless,
They saw me unfit?
Still I pictured this creature on the tree tops, lining Queen's square,
All that was beneath, such ordinaire,
And are all above such hair tinted creatures?
Drooled and thirst?
I ached my neck back,
Realising the horizon was lightening, for it was apparent.
And all in such short time,
the climax came too little.

Little but what the creature had left,
That was swaying wood out of eye's sight,
And the fluttering leaves that rumbled humbly in disturbance,
As if attacked and reacted,
As a body would to a needle.

All but tonight.

Nothing saved me from my plight,
I was just another colour under midnight's light.

Wake me from this, I wondered,
Pondering on an ending,
Or not seeing beach light again.
As I left the cobbles closer,
I ran thoughts through a bitterly set mind.

Surely, if I cannot sleep as alive,
I shan't sleep when I am dead either?

Commited to a wander that is mood lead,
Waiting to be accepted into eternity?
See, I think they're watching.
I'm waited.
I'm watched.
But I'll go out in daylight today,
It hidden by grey cloud and musk.
And the goers by,
Suits, ties, and nine to five thirty,
Scurry as rats do to the sewers,
To the train stations, to the bus depos.
As I rest weary, moon streaked eyes,
And pace out around them.
A slower, more tuned walk than they, gushes by,
With worries of such,
That I once would have dreamt, yet dreaded having,
As a ten year old wishing amnesia upon my self.

And wishing for all the woes of an ordinaire.
Yet the moment I spend my ordinary walk home,
Claiming and comparing,
To be as ordinary as;
Those who eat ordinarily for a living,
Those who ignore the ache in their side,
Those who pine for those they cannot have,
Those who find those of a similar life,
A tree snaps before me.
And they wonder if I'm truly ready.
As do I.