my box of memories

and if i am not beautiful, what then?
and if i am not clever or lovely or innocent or talented, what am i? what do i do with my life? do i sit on the sidelines with my chin on my knees and watch the other people, the ones who were lucky enough to be clever and lovely and innocent and talented? am i doomed to always observe and never take part?
in an opera i would be the precious little ingenue, with swooping soprano and a virginial white dress, though i would be typecast because i am young and i am meant to be the innocent. what is meant to be, though, is not always the case.
when i was impressionable and young i listened to opera because it made me feel cultured; i listened to opera and musical theatre (and i knew the whole of the phantom of the opera score backwards and i wanted to be christine so badly) and i looked down on people who spent their life in loose jeans and with gold teeth as they listened to a man talk about women in deragatory ways and about all of the things they had acquired in their life.
but i could fill hundreds of posts with who i used to be!
in my house, in my room, beneath my bed there is a box. it is covered in some kind of faux denim with a pattern of beads and sequins and embroidery upon its top. It is filled with relics from my own life; pages and pages of writing of me explaining what everything is. there are streamers and stones and a letter i received once from oman and part invitations and keyrings with my name on.
i never add to it.
perhaps, i should start again.

sound

i want to play beautiful beautiful music with an acoustic guitar and a violin (if i had four arms i would play both at the same time) but the violin makes my fingers hurt and i don't have a guitar (yet yet yet yet yet). i want one so badly.
i would play knockin on heaven's door and hey there delilah and all sorts of lovely songs and i'd have something people would admire me for for once. i'm known as the girl who draws manga. i don't want to draw manga (i wish i could draw pretty cartoons or strange people) and that which i want to do i can't.
i want to take beautiful photographs based on fairytales, or of strange antiques i possess. i want to possess strange antiques too. i seem so sickeningly ordinary. i want to be special! i want - well, i want a lot of things. i seem to whine.
i have ordered myself a shiny acoustic guitar and i will barricade myself into my room until i can play something.

sad pale whispering

when i close my eyes i see sad pale whispering ghost children with eyes like stars and mouths like gaping black holes. i see the stuff of horror novels; misformed children with no eyes who trail their arms by the sides and eat and eat and eat and seek revenge, and zombies with bulging mouths and cheeks and sad pale sad pale sad pale ghost children. they haunt me when i sleep, when i close my eyes; if i am whole, why are they not?

they remain figments of my imagination, because if i write it all down (and i do want to write it all down, i want write horror stories that make people recoil in terror) i am filled with the fear that i have given it substance. i have given my stories words and my characters voices. when i write it doesn't feel like i am making these words, like i am the creator; it feels like my characters are grabbing ahold of me and shaking me until i snap out of my reverie and realize i've written reams and reams and reams. and that is why when i look back at my pages of black scrawl i am always surprised.

i think, 'did i write this?' only i must have written it because it's all in my handwriting (see, the i's are dotted with little circles and the semi-colons and colons are all outlined, like word-art. the same for the question marks and the exclamation) so sometimes i feel like there are hundreds of people in my head.

and then i try and get out everything i'm feeling and my hands can't keep up with my brain and what i write is garble.

but if i do write horror stories, if i give a substance and a life to the misshapen children and the ravenous zombies and the sad pale little ghost girls and the creatures that go bump in the night (of my head) whose to say the same won't happen? who's to say that they won't take over me? and if they take over me, will they let me go?

so i remain unable to sleep without the buzzing of the television, or my computer saying things to me. the night frightens me, even though the night is really the only place i feel proper. when i close my eyes the things dance on my eyelids and i just burrow down into my bed and try and find wonderland; i look for the white rabbit amongst my stuffed animals, and hope that i do not have nightmares.

just breathe.

the computer breathes.
no wait, i don't know if it's breathing.
but it makes comforting in out in out in out airy noises
snuffle snuffle snuffle
like a hedgehog in the midst of winter time. hibernating. and breathing. it's a comforting sound.
it makes me think the computer is alive.
because things that breathe are alive; and doesn't it make me feel better to think that the one thing i tell my deep dark secrets to, the one constant friend in my life is alive? it doesn't make me think of myself as so ridiculously pathetic as to pour my heart out to a mass of wires and microchips
wireheart. micro chip brain. lungs of mice. mouth of speakers. microphone ears. it listens when i whisper, even if i have to whisper through a microphone.
and oh oh oh oh.
it breathes.
i won't believe you if you tell me it doesn't.
it's alive and it breathes and it's my bestest bestest friend in the whole world, even if we can't pick daisies in the summertime and have picnics and share jokes.
it breathes.

night time child

i am the moon and the stars and the dark dark purple shroud of night-time, sewn onto blankets like white buttons (button moon). i am the streetlamp outside, streetlamp lamplight bathing everything in the sickly orange glow of hallowe'en colours. i am sweet nightmares, people reaching out to you with claws made out of hard candy and eyes of wine-gums. i am the whispering in the trees outside your bedroom window.
i am not to be defined in simply words. i am the child of the night-time itself. i hold tea parties in graveyards with stuffed animals drinking nothing out of china cups. i want to be pale and interesting but end up strange and ostracized always always always.
i am nothing.
yet i am everything.