P. Lapinou

Corso

Bad days of drunk / Make bad days of sorry / Last night was stained with fear / I or the world was all wrong

Artyom Sidorkin

A storm lashing against the badly-fitting windows wakes me up. But then I cough, so maybe I was about to wake to cough anyway. During the night the curtain rail has fallen down, yes, I remember that, I woke up when that happened.

I can see the night lit up via various sources: this person has left their (kitchen?) light on, the glow from street lamps, cars’ headlights, the moon of course, but mostly at this particular moment in time the sky is lit up in a tremendous flash of lightning. During this, the tree outside, which I have variously observed turning shades of red and orange, shedding leaves, suspending seed pods from its naked branches, this tree of mine is briefly captured in silhouette against the white slap of lightning, like an X-Ray of a tree. Its branches are bones, and the trunk is bone, and the splinters are bones. Now it is dark again and it is a tree, but I have seen its insides and I won’t pretend otherwise.

I lie against the pillow watching the rain heave against the dirty glass and the rotting windowframes and I remember that man asking “Where are you from?” and how many times I have been asked that in my life, and if I had a superpower it would be to make nobody ask me that ever again.

Is This A Good Day

I resist the urge to be belligerent and resent the sing-songy quality of his voice, the way he uses my name a lot, the way he says ‘Okay’ like that, I admit that I imagine him pushing his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose but it isn’t that I sneer at his compassionate dismissal of my apologies, or, though I assume myself to be able to guess at his beverage choices, that I hate him.

Since we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, I say to the collective individuals who crowd in the sparse car park where something else used to be, we should probably at least try and find something in one another that we can find amusing, endearing, or interesting.

Most wear casual sorts of clothes, many are bored, some are patronising, all but one are at least well-intentioned, they look into my eyes, they use simplistic language, they hand-hold, they roll their eyes, but not in front of me, they use the word ‘fuck’, exhale, I mean, they should, after all, I have downtime, I don’t have to live in the car park.

I say ‘Thank you’, I use this smile that I’ve never really used before. A vulnerable, nervous, appreciative smile. I’m not sure where I picked it up, but I use it a lot now, to signify ‘This is the end of our time together, for now, I am leaving and I still do not entirely trust you but I am very aware of not seeming rude or hostile, of seeking out an equilibrium whereby maybe you want to help me not just because you’re getting paid, but because, you just think, maybe, that I’m lovely’.

I smile and leave, and I say ‘Thank you’, but the truth is, that none of them, cross-legged, quiet-voiced, direct-gazing, have helped me, can help me, because I do not love them, I don’t even know them, and I eventually have to leave a note under a windscreen wiper that informs them, politely, and sweetly, that I have actually found a cure, and that it is love, and that I have prescribed myself love, and have gone to acquire it, and won’t be back.

Malamud

Q. Why don’t you keep a journal?

A. I’m afraid of what it might say.