Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Especially to my little one.

I don't think it was ever bias that you were mine.  You are the most beautiful thing I ever saw.

For you, for ever.

Sleep tight.

Dickhead

I took your death out on another kid who had your look.  His teeth were less crooked but his smile was yours and I didn't want anyone to have that.  They never did it quite as well as you did anyway.

I'm sorry I forgot your birthday.  In years past and when I hadn't found your grave, I left flowers for another boy who died your age in the hope that somehow they'd be known.  I found your place in June, and the headstone looked so new I half-believed they must've buried you last week.  That birthday you got roses, and irises and lilies and all the things we never would have got you years before.  But somehow now they're all I think to buy.

I forgot because it's changed somewhere.  Not a day went by I didn't used to think of you, and if I hadn't slept than I'd have said it's not an hour.  But it's been a long, long time since then, and I can go whole days without remembering that I miss you.  I'm sorry for it, and I'm sorry that I'm glad about it too.  I'm sorry that I'm tired of being sad for you.

When you drank yourself to death alone that Friday night, I don't know where I was.  I don't know why I wasn't there that time, when every other week I'd been beside you.  And still today I wonder how intentional it was, your missing letter never able to confirm it either way.  I knew that you weren't happy all the time but then who is?  You laughed too much to die.

I still see your face as clearly as I ever could, the smile, the gap between your teeth.  I might not think about you every day but there's yet to be a week.  And still it brings the same old sting, and anger that you couldn't stick around.  I wish I'd had the chance to hate you, even more the chance to die before you.  I wish I didn't know you, ever, or just never knew you'd gone for good.  I wish I didn't miss you like I do.

Marks and Spencer is changing its name to Gethsemane

Yesterday brought little relief from the imminent threat of death by stalker.

In fact the whole day was interminable.  Work brought two hours of psychology, where my entirely redundant presence requires me to sit and listen to lessons on unethical psychological experiments.  It is all very interesting, but I left the class, once again, with my soul in turmoil at the terrifying fragility of the human condition and the precarious hold by which society maintains its stability.

After work, I thought it might be nice to go to Marks and Spencer, because I am in mortal need of new headphones.  My current pair are on the cusp of explosion, and I really do require headphones so I can't hear the horrible things the students are probably saying about me on the train.  I was rather disappointed to discover, however, that not only is the biggest M&S in the fucking south entirely barren of headphones, but they provide a very misleading pair of earmuffs that really got my hopes up for a moment.  I then got lost trying to find the toilets, and ended up wandering around the labyrinthine children's section for ten minutes like a paedophile overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice.

When I eventually located the elusive bathroom, I found myself unable to use a urinal as there was a gentleman there with his underage son, and I had already made myself look illegal enough so I was forced to go darting into a cubicle.  Rather unpleasantly, the toilet I elected to take refuge in had a poo floating in it, and in locking the door I thereby became responsible for the poo.  Even though I had not put it there, to exit the cubicle and leave it languishing to be discovered by another would have left me feeling humiliated and ashamed.  So after I completed my wee I flushed it away, and it went without a fight, which makes me wonder why the horrendous fucker who dropped it from his rectum didn't deign to do the same.

I made it home without being arrested as a child-snatcher, but as soon as I had the temerity to relax, fate swooped in to snatch the calm away.  The phone rang.  I answered it.  'Hello?' I said.  But nobody said hello back.  Nobody said anything at all.  I waited about ten seconds until I realised it must be the killer continuing his vendetta against my already fragile psyche, and slammed it back into the receiver, my calm shattered for the night.  The whole affair is taking a dreadful toll on my health, and last night I found myself unable to sleep due to a crippling bout of heart palpitations that left me lying wide-eyed in the darkness convinced I was teetering on the brink of mortality.  And then, when they eventually stopped, it was so unnervingly sudden that I thought my heart must there and then have ceased to beat, and I had already begun to plunge headlong into the dark inevitability of death.

And now I've washed myself with some new-fangled mint-scented shower gel, and it's just too fucking minty.  My balls are burning with freshness.

The only thing that could top this off would be bombing Syria.

The balance of humanity hangs on a thread.  The propensity for evil is in all of us.

Dickhead - Alcohol Awareness Week, Day VII

Hey, kiddo.

I wanted to write something for you but the words haven't come so easy recently.  

Maybe I could've finished it tonight, if I'd put some real effort in, but that was never us and I'm not about to change things now.

This is a promise that it's coming.  That I'm working on it.  That I want it to be perfect for you.

Your name is wonder

awaking in a fucking summer dawn

and youth

that dying

taught my lips to mourn.

Miss you, kiddo.