Tear us apart? Baby, I would rather be dead
I have loved you since I was born. I have written this letter in my mind one hundred times. Looking over at you with drunken adoration in a sweaty nightclub while we dance as badly as only you and I can.
“A slick new leaf / unfurling like a fist, I’ll take it all”
I recently bought a nail shade in Black Cherry but I can’t bring myself to paint my fingers and toes without hearing Elektra Abundance declare ‘I despise a night-time colour in July’ in the back of my silly little impressionable brain, even though the foreseeable forecast on my iPhone says non-stop rain until next Monday.
Ain’t no river wide enough, baby
Every Mother’s Day, the Instagram grid transforms into a love letter to the women who’ve given us all life. Beloved matriarchs who hold a family together. Powerhouse single mothers who’ve brought up an entire brood on one wage. Step-mums that’ve welcomed another woman’s children as their own. The mums that double as best friends, cheerleaders, and life navigators. This is a love letter to the in-between – a candle to the grey area.
The flip side, hope, and the medicinal value of possibility
The first time I ever experienced sharp, unexpected disappointment was probably around the age of seven or eight, when I used our family dog’s lead to try and “walk” Penny, one of our pet cats, and she simply ran so fast, I was left holding a long, slack lead attached to her empty collar. There you have it – cats will let you down! But not nearly as much as the rest of the world, it turns out.
Why Springsteen and sex appeal are mutually exclusive
Just before this time last year, in the days of throwing your arms around your friends at every possible moment, sipping on the same straws in bottomless brunch triathlons, and sharing a cig because you don’t fancy a full one but then going on to chain-smoke a whole pack, I concluded a night out by getting a lift home from the guy I was sleeping with. Throughout the car journey, I detailed at length how I would never, ever settle down with a man unless the man in question was Bruce Springsteen.
Jacket potatoes and time travel
Lately, I’ve been thinking about time travel. Mostly, how it lacks all the urgency of Doc Brown’s race to channel 1.21 gigawatts of energy and 88 miles per hour into the DeLorean with a single strike of lightning, and how really, it’s much quieter – almost indiscernible. It creeps up gently and softens the edges a little. A vignette: remember this? Now, I don’t even remember what I thought of Back to the Future before I knew it was his favourite film.
The beginnings of summer in a global pandemic
I’ve lost my passport.
I’m declaring it ‘lost’ / but really, it’s in my room somewhere, buried among a sea of boxes I’ve still yet to unpack. / ‘My room’ / my little brother’s old room / the spare room.
Finding joy in quarantine
Eleven days ago, ‘lockdown’ became a definite fact of my existence, instead of just a word I jokily substituted for Skepta’s 'Shutdown'. Perhaps you’ve been self-isolating for a lot longer; I’ve learned that in a real-time pandemic, everyone’s timescales are different. Much to the horror of my routine-obsessed self, there’s no absolute linear protocol to be followed during a global disaster; we’re all simply muddling through.
Are you in love?
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. It’s also four months – give or take a couple of days – since I broke up with my boyfriend of five years, and the first time I’ve been single on the 14th of February in almost a decade. Each of these facts means something – though I’m not quite sure what, exactly.
I'll tell you in the morning
An unlikely Halloween pairing. You, a priest; and me, Mia Wallace (predictable). I almost went home with your crucifix – instead, you took my number. / Small sentences on blue screens slowly became paragraphs. You ran out of credit and borrowed Joe’s phone to send me questions about my childhood, with anecdotes about yours. / 2013 romance.