Involuntary Memory

It's cold. Correction, it's fucking freezing. I look to the blonde next to me, this is definately a suicide attempt. Slowly but surely he's going to kill us. We're sitting on a wall above a courtyard. Looking down I consider the drop and immediately tighten my grip on the rail behind me. 'What do you have against my general happiness?' I ask breaking him from his thoughts. He wraps his arms around me tighter.

'I told you darling I'm just finishing what Hitler started, if you like we can share a special cigarette to warm you up?'

He waits for a response.
It's neither a yes or a no when I nudge him.

'Have you ever--' he pauses, 'fuck what am I doing to you?'

'Finish your sentence.'

'Have you ever, you know, before? I'll assume not and tell you to swallow as much as you can. If it comes out of your nose you're doing it right.'
I give him nothing and watch as he pulls a matchbox out. The same one he wrestles off me every other day, I always wondered why it got him so worked up.

'I still don't know why we're here.'

He takes a drag and passes the joint over to me. It stays in his hand for a moment too long, he withdraws his offer.
'I shouldn't have done that to you' his breath is heavy with tobacco and something more, taking me back to my childhood. I shift closer wanting to immerse myself in the scent.



I close my eyes and I'm 4 again. I've slipped out of the house to the backyard, the darkness envelops my tiny form and for a second I'm invisible. The ground is damp under my feet as I tip-toe towards the fence, it's freezing. Two arms suddenly shoot out from the darkness drawing me up and against a warm body.

'What are you doing here flea?'

I press closer to the source of warmth, laying my head on it's shoulder and inhaling a familiar scent. The body belongs to my godfather.
He shifts me slightly as he takes a drag of his 'cigarette'. Still expecting an answer.

'Not sleepy' I reply burying myself deeper into his chest.


'Darling?' his voice breaks me from my reverie, I glance up at him wondering what I've missed. 'Darling I've been terrible to you today.'

'I'm a masochist,' I can see the guilt in his eyes. Shrugging I launch into a story about my morning. To show him I really couldn't care less. I tell him about a little boy running through the train carriage and my imagining him falling between the train and the tracks at every stop.

'You're sick' he smiles. First one for the morning.

'No, I'm fucked.'

'You're sick, you'd be fucked if you hadn't thought of it. The mere fact that you did shows you had some concern for the childs wellbeing.'

I cast him a sidelong look, 'go on.'

'You're not as bad as you think you are. I mean, you might be a monster in your little suburb but compared to the people I know you're a fucking saint'

I can't argue with him, though I resent the comparison.

'You're still corrupt, just reasonably so' he says, pressing a kiss to my temple. 'Like a dirty angel' there's another pause and for once he doesn't fill it.

I laugh, more out of habit than anything else, 'you should write for Madonna.'I untangle myself from his grasp and slip under the rails, leaning down towards him I whisper, 'find a girlfriend, I'm cold.'

He ignores the comment. 'I was being insightful, really bonding with you.'

I shoot him a skeptical look, 'boyfriend then.'

He rolls his eyes, 'fucking iceberg.'

One day I'll be good to him.

I never let you in

Therapy is not found on this couch, not in this room and definitely not in hollow observations.

Therapy is in your voice rushing through my ears, our comfortable silences and a lust for something more.

It's an appointment that keeps me here. I have no compulsion to spill my secrets to a stranger.

You don't have degrees on your walls or even an imposing oak desk, but when my words are stuck in a quagmire of self-doubt and transitory thoughts, I turn to you.

He tells me to open up, like it's a cardinal sin to not to be emotionally promiscuous.

I never needed to let you in, you were here when I arrived.

He says I hide my loneliness by interacting with anthropomorphised objects. I let him know the lamp thinks he's a bastard.

The ashtray approves of you.

His diagnosis comes with a prescription, lots of -cides and -idiums.

Your diagnosis comes with a prescription too, all Nico and PJ Harvey.

He says he can't see me making any progress.

One day I'll send him your binoculars.