They call it "Single-Awareness Day".

14th Feb

I can still see the way you stood.
Don’t tell me you’ve changed your stance
because that picture is so vivid.
Head tilted, resting on one foot.

The guy in front of us had roses.
Their velvet softness made me smile
and I think it was a shame.
Crimson petals in perfect smooth posies.

You laughed at my ideals, but
it was an idea taken from mine.
The box was red and hard edged;
large black letters stretched across it’s front.

I wish you hadn’t been so nervous
because the memories feel strange.
But our safe place was warm.
So do you remember last year?

"Let’s dance in style, let’s dance for a while, Heaven can wait we’re only watching the skies... Let us die young or let us live forever, We don’t have the power but we never say never...
Forever young, I wanna be forever young. Do you really want to live forever? Forever and ever?
Forever young, I wanna be forever young. Do you really want to live forever? Forever, forever young?"

Glitter

A friend once said to me, "You must have some kind muse following you around because you always seem to come across these astonishing things," - like sunsets and icicle trees. I was going to tell him No. I was all ready to go back to him and say, "Nah, I just get lucky, that's all."
And I was thinking about this as I walked through the dark to pick up my sister. But then, Oh. A sight. A glimpse into another world.

A garden to my right, with ragged grass and a shallow pond. A wire fence at the back that leaned crazily away, supported by bushes. A gap in the bushes. And beyond...
Somehow the ground after that fence dipped into what appeared to be a gaping hole, and on the other side of that chasm I saw a scene that was unreal enough to be fairy tale.
Blue-green grass. Crooked arms of crooked trees. A strange sea-like light that cause everything to look aquatic and nominal. Light caught in burning balls in the fingers of the trees. Everything glitters.
Incredible. I stop and stare. My instinct is to walk forward into the garden and towards this gateway into a different dimension, but then I step sideways and the magic is gone. A dark field with tired trees; yellow street lamps, their poles hidden in the tree trunks, casting hard shadows on the cold ground.
When I pass it the second time, going the other way, I slow down as I come to the opening and look there it is again. I stop my sister and hold her in front of me and point out the breathtaking strangeness and beauty. I describe to her what she's supposed to see and she squints and peers and then agrees. It does look odd, doesn't it?
And move on.

Well, now. I don't know about a muse. And I'm not so sure about lucky, any more. Maybe I just notice things more than other people, that's all. Or maybe someone's put a filter over my eyes that makes me see... Strangeness. Glitter. Beauty.
Stories.

"Look at the stars, look how they shine for you. And all the things that you do."

Kin.

I find you hard to write. It is as if you are too... real. Or too close. Or too much a part of me.
You ask me for a picture - why is it I cannot even do that? I know you too well, I think. Trying to get you down onto paper seems an interminable task. Maybe I could condense you into a cartoon. I think I could. I think, maybe a poem would do as well...

I need to stop thinking of you as a whole and take only one aspect. Your humour. Your image. Your attitude.

You pass me in a hurry and I know exactly where you are going, what you are doing. I think living with someone makes them hard to view from a distance. They're too near all the time.

You should go away on holiday. I did not make use of the time when you went last time, but if you went again, maybe I would. Maybe then I would sit down and think about you. Maybe then I could separate the memories and knowledge of you a little and change you into letters that form words that form... a piece. Finished. Incomplete, maybe, but finished.

And maybe I could make you happy with that...

On vigil.

They are still awake. Twenty six beds in two neat rows. Most filled, most asleep, some still rustling, some still moving. Their voices have only just calmed - what is it about these impish little minds that they can't understand the notion of "quiet brings sleep"? They rummage and sigh and complain. It's the heat, it's the noise, it's the people. It's everything and everyone but themselves. One of them rolls over in her sleep and I envy her, that she is able to rest and dream and recharge.
I stalk the dorm on soft feet and swing my head towards any noise made as if I can silence it with a look. And sometimes I can. They don't like my presence; it forces them to lay still and keep quiet. Tomorrow I will talk to them, these restless little girls. Tomorrow my tiredness will voice itself and tomorrow night... I hope for sleep.
I hear them breathing and this time no voice breaks the gentle rhythm. Maybe finally they are at rest. Their sleeping heads are taking them where I, right now, wish I was. And as they sink deeper into their dreams I sit here and record my thoughts.
I am the last one awake. Which means I am the last one to sleep.