Confession Hotline

Confession Hotline

-x-

First Time Caller
Very Nearly In Love
Well, It’s Over
Dinner and a Show
Drunk
Wardrobe
The Last Call

-x-

First Time Caller

Hey.
Hi.
Hola.

No,
it doesn’t matter what my name is,
you wouldn’t be able to spell it,
so there’s no use in me telling.
There’s some things I need to tell,
some things that are scorching my soul,
and I’m starting to wonder if beneath my skin lies a madness,
some kind of sickness,
that I don’t know how to fix.

I looked at all the pills in the medicine cabinet,
and none of them seemed to fit my fixation.
None of them promised a solution for my condition.
I’m all out of position.
Gravity is a fairytale,
and I’m eleven now, so I’m getting old.
I put my glasses on.
I take them off.
Nothing changes.
The world is exactly how I’ve always seen it,
and his face is how I can’t help but see it.
I think there’s something wrong with it,
maybe something wrong with me,
but I’ve got to revise for my SATs,
so I don’t have the spare time to fix whatever the fuck this is.

I have the body of a budding woman,
but the face of a beautiful baby,
and all she ever does is cry.
All I can think to do is cry,
because there’s change on the horizon,
and in the back of my mind, where I hope people can’t see it,
and I just hope that I’ll spontaneously die before I have to deal with it.

I am beginning to understand why my mother worries.

Why can’t I see what all the other girls can see?
I try the glasses thing again and I’m galled by how nothing changes.
Why can’t I see what all the other girls see?
Why can’t he have soft, rose tinted lips,
that sweet sheen on his skin that sends my soul screaming?
His face is angular and alarming,
stony in such a way that I am petrified,
missing my Medusa as I meet loneliness under the full moon.

I don’t believe in her.
She is a ghost story.
She is an urban myth.
She is the kind of thing that will unravel me,
and as the days dance by,
I am starting to see that she has many soft, sweet faces, with rose tinted lips,
so all I do is run,
hoping that she cannot catch up to me.

I have been in a fever for months,
since I saw the music video for Me Against The Music,
and realised that there was more to life than books and bad sci fi.
There were…
well, you know,
the secret thoughts that settled in my soul,
half the population,
and their newfound power over me,
shameless, shameful sensations that spun my head and sank me into a depressed slumber every night.

I am eleven and I can’t be in love,
but I’m lost in this confusing lust.
I love it.
I long for it.
Yearning and hounded by my hunger for it,
and yet,
begging for the burning of my desire to drown in the mercy of cold, cruel showers.

The possibility of falling in love is overwhelming,
and I’m overloaded with the most mundane of fantasies.
I want to go to a drive in movie and be met with the kind of monster that will steal me away to a faraway island,
the kind of place where nobody can survive,
so that nobody can see me when I’m alone and attacked by my attraction to the 50 ft woman.

What am I going to do?

-x-

Very Nearly In Love

I lost your number, like I thought I’d lost the monosexual monkey on my back,
but I’m back,
and so is she.
Listen.
You don’t understand.
Nobody is going to understand.
I know that every teenager thinks their trials and tribulations are truly terrible and alarmingly unique,
but I really am the only… you know… in the village,
so for me, this really is a road that I have no choice to walk down alone,
and I didn’t pack sensible shoes.

I have to drop out of school,
which is a shame,
because it’s really the only thing I do successfully,
but there’s this girl and if I see her again,
I think I’ll bury myself in the warm waves of the river Thames,
because she is…

Her mastery over monopolising my mind by simply smiling from across the room is going to be my undoing.
I had all my defences in play this morning.
Rosary under the desk,
focusing my eyes on the plain, poorly painted ceiling,
picturing myself,
alone and wandering the village, vulnerable and violent, breaking my mother’s heart with this sickness,
but she just breezed past all of them,
by walking past me with a slight smile.
It wasn’t even a substantial smile,
just a slight smirk in the corner of her mouth,
and I was just…

You remember how we talked about lust?
Last time I told you I was too young to be in love,
but that was eleven and this is fourteen,
and I have been afforded a little maturity, you see, so now,
I am very nearly in love for the first time and I am freaking the fuck out.
I’m not quite there,
but left to my own devices, there’s no other direction for me to go.

What am I supposed to do?

-x-

Well, It’s Over

Well, it’s over.
I spoke to her,
or to be more specific,
she spoke to me.
I guess I’m giving into this.
The world is on fire and I am blissfully breaking all of my own boundaries,
because there is this rush,
this buzz when I’m beside her,
talking about the music she likes,
what she did over the summer,
and I am sitting on my hands,
scratching them to ribbons,
to keep them quiet about all the ideas they have.

I went walking in the fields after school,
my waist, lost in a sea of towering, dancing crops,
whispering “I’d wait forever to be your girl”,
wondering what it would be like to have her phone number,
wishing in a way that we’d never met,
because

I told her today that one day, I’m going to be an admired and aspired to writer, or a pop star’s wife, like the kind of girls we spy in Heat Magazine (that magazine was a surprisingly good ice breaker!)
but the truth is,
my greatest ambition is the acclaim of being hers.

When will that be legal?

-x-

Dinner and a Show

You’re not going to believe this.
She took me to dinner and then we sat, nervously in the dark as a movie I didn’t much care for played.
I mean…
all of our friends came too,
but they collapsed into a blur behind us and it was nothing but me, a nervous wreck, and her, a tempest of blue eyes.
We sat together,
and as we watched two boring people fall in love on the screen,
I wondered if that would happen for me,
for her,
for us.

She scares me to death,
but I know that I’d die without her.
That is how drastic this has become,
and she only makes it worse, by making me think it isn’t just in my head.
Marking her territory with jealous glares and late night long conversations,
she tells me that I am her very best friend,
but that I can’t tell her public best friend,
because she would take it badly.

I quietly agree,
clearing my schedule, for my new bestie duties,
that include such things as constant conversations,
daydreaming about a future that always includes each other,
and planning elaborate and ridiculous home made birthday gifts for each other.

I have a horrible feeling that we are more that very best friends.
Don’t ask me why,
because I can’t explain,
but sometimes, I catch her looking at me for longer than she should,
and I recognise that look in her eyes,
because I’ve been trying to hide it for months in my own.

I say something cinematic,
in the hopes that I can fill her eyes with stars,
and just as I’d hoped,
there they go,
and here I go,
abseiling into the abyss with a stupid smile.

What the fuck does this even mean?

-x-

Drunk

Hi.
I know it’s been a long time,
I’d like to tell you that I’m better now,
all cured and crushing on someone that I’m supposed to,
but we both know that the harmful sickness has a hold much stronger than my spirit,
so I am still lost in it and just trying to stay out of trouble.

I have failed at this in the worst way,
wayward and whirring out of control,
taking my shame to the streets of my Father’s land.
We’re on a girls holiday that is slyly disguised as a school trip,
and I’ve been showing her the sights,
tripping on loose pavement slabs and the guilt that has taken to follow me with a tired stare.

We rode a rollercoaster today,
and as we descended the maniacal, mechanical hill,
she grabbed my hand and the thrill was intoxicating and intolerable.
Right now,
we are drunk,
(don’t tell my mum),
two teens,
barely legal,
barely making sense as Smirnoff slinks down the throats of those who won’t talk about why they’re staring so hard,
with such soft eyes.

I think, for the avoidance of doubt,
I find myself in the deepest, most dramatic kind of love and I think I’m going to allow it to destroy me.

Why am I like this?

-x-

Wardrobe

I can charm the birds from the trees,
the leaves from the autumn wind and the salt from the ocean,
but she is stuck, at the back and bottom of her wardrobe,
hands over her ears as I sing my sweet, siren song.

Sometimes we swap places and she knocks incessantly at the door,
as I shake my head and sob to drown out the delicious demon that waits on the other side.

I have found another song that reminds me of her,
another place in my head that she has decided to haunt,
and I just added the song to the list,
laying in the dark and listening with tears in my eyes,
because this is too much,
and there’s nothing I can do.

When will I stop loving her?

-x-

The Last Call

Hi.
I know it’s been a long time and I’ve lived another life time since we met.

In answer to my last question,
it was sixteen months and three days until my heart was my own again,
and then,
predictably and painfully,
it was plucked, once again, from my bruised body,
flying high above my head into her arms.
Someone new,
but still a her,
so it’s still an issue.

I issued an apology to my tearful soul and breathed like it was my last chance,
long and deep,
approaching rejection with some kind of intuition,
not to her,
but to half of my blood,
to ask permission to feel.
It would never be granted,
so,
like an elusive dream,
I evaporated,
leaving her life,
leaving her in a lonely, locked bedroom to crawl back to the safety of solitude,
while I surrendered to the stoicism and sufferance.

Why did you let me believe that it would end any other way?