Training

A Short Story

Sitting in a mandatory employee induction session, we watch as a painfully thin woman – clad in a dress that can only be described as vomit-inducingly expensive – ascends the steps to the small podium.

She has the look of someone who has never known anything other than boredom; I imagine if you slapped her across the face she’d barely bother to roll her her eyes at you.

She opens her mouth and introduces her self-important title, then she begins her presentation and her mouth ejects one single word.
It immediately becomes the most apathetic, monotoned word ever heard: Ambition.

Alice.

This Is Not My Umbrella

Electric Youth.

That childhood game:
Counting the moments
Between the flash of light
And the crash of sound.

Curling up in the window
Was a safe distance,
But still close enough
To be allowed to scream.

Pillow fortresses
And mother’s words
Make everything
As right as rain.

Couldn’t sleep
Because the noise woke you.
Wouldn’t settle
Because the light scared you.

Too tired to do anything,
Except pet the quivering dog
And drink mugfuls
Of sleepy hot chocolate.

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Only half an hour ago I was sipping wine at a meet-and-greet for work. Then I walked home in the absolutely torrential downpour.

This is not my umbrella.

Alice.

Punch Bag

The boyfriend left today, which was sad, so I dealt with my sadness the same way anyone does: I went to the gym and hit a punch bag until I felt better.
Whilst there, I also came up with this. So here you go, some experimental prosetry for you, you lucky bastards.

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PUNCH BAG

Hit It, and hit It,
Until It falls.
Let blood drip on
A crisp white shirt
Then trample It
Into dust.

Rub Its nose
Into the ground
Until It knows
It’s nothing.

It’s nothing personal,
It’s just the way things go.
Kids. Wadda-you-gonna-do.
Ha. Haha.

But It can grow up,
Scarred but not scared.
It can grow up
And It can learn
To fight
If It chooses.

Or It can learn
How to love itself,
Aided by others
Who show It how.

It can be big or small
And It can be kind or not
But It cannot
Forget you;
You,
Who landed the first blow.
You,
Who chanted the first rhyme.
You,
Who had the class in stitches,
Crying with laughter
And holding their sides.
Just like It did when you winded It.
You will be remembered.

There are many ways
To be remembered.
But I think that is
The worst of them.

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These stop my knuckles breaking and bleeding.
YAY!

Alice.

Writing Wrongs*

A Sense of Self

He spends his life falling through cracks, trying to imitate others.
He often stops to wonder if he is anything new, a strange wonder the world had yet to face.
Or is he just the product – an amalgamation – of all that he has seen; all that he has heard; all that has come before him?

It is not a new thought but it has started keeping him awake.
He concludes that he is as meaningless as it is possible to be.
He would pull his duvet up, over his head, press it tightly into his mouth and scream if he didn’t feel that other people had done this already, and he is sick of doing what others have already made their own.

If only he could see. By falling short of the Greats; by occupying this space in between, he is finding his own way in the world, just off the tracks beaten by those who have been and gone.
If only he could see that, maybe he would think those tracks mattered.

---

There. Have some more experimental writing. You lucky, luck things.
I don’t like the ending but I don’t have time to do anything about it.

I have, for quite a while now, been trying to do a little bit of writing each day – often free writing, sometimes just experimenting with common ideas and themes, trying to find ways of expressing them in the limited yet all-too-variable form of words.
I have also been trying to blog every single day.

Now, working night shifts, keeping irregular hours, trying to apply for jobs, and trying to have enough of a life on top of all of that so I don’t just want to spend every day in floods of tears has been difficult and, quite often, either the time I want to spend writing elapses before I get anywhere, or else I write really boring entries on this blog and then I end up wondering why I’m keeping up with it at all if I have nothing to say.

So, for the time being, I have decided to combine the time I want to spend writing and the time I want to spend blogging. Maybe not every single day as a lot of what I write is totally illegible/sometimes not fit to be read but – at least until I get a day job – I’m afraid that this blog may start filling with meandering thoughts and abstract short pieces of prose.
So, sorry about that.

Then again, it’s probably a bit of a relief not to hear me moaning on about how difficult it is to be a graduate with a nice flat and loving parents and a job which pays the bills and enough money in her purse to buy too much red lipstick…

Final thought: I tried to take about eight different selfies today and this is the only one I like… I wonder if that says something about me…

Alice.

*I think I may have stolen this title from something else. I can’t figure out what. If it was you I am sorry, but there is also a chance it is self-plagiarism and I just don’t remember… 

Free Writing

A free-writing exercise. Because it’s my blog and I’ll do what I like.

Elated by freedom.
Put down by the realisation of differently-shaped cages.
Inspiration to move forward, fuelled by childish dreams of a big break.
Held back by nostalgia that makes the recollection of the past appear rose-tinted, as if all was always perfect.
The suffocating feelings of going to a place once-familiar and noticing very little has changed except the eyes which view it.
The panic of places new and strange.
No anchor, but no oars either.
The feeling of trying to walk with one foot nailed to the ground.
A to do list on repeat.
Carved stone, not eroding into sand, but melting slowly.
An abundance of clichés.
Appointments with those who have already found their tracks.
A wardrobe-become-dress-up-box; delved into every day.
Discarded thoughts, scrawled on receipts, lying dormant at the bottom of a handbag.
The unafforability of life under a clear sky.
Faces from the past recalled without their names.
And I, I am one of them.
Great, fat feelings roll like waves and I do not always remember how to swim.

 

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I was not in the mood to travel yesterday so stayed an extra day at my parents’ house instead.
I feel a little better today. Just need to spend more time practising the sort of writing I want to be doing in between writing the applications for jobs I don’t think I’m qualified enough for.

 

Alice.