I’ll never forgive myself for that.

(although it seems like I am).

Maybe sometime in the future

I’ll be able to find meaning from everything going on at the minute.

Maybe I never will.

The last three weeks have been the toughest of my life.

I’m not looking for sympathy – sympathy won’t save me.

Five deaths in three weeks.

Now that’s gotta hurt anyone,

Whether they’re four or forty;

Or, like me, just about to turn seventeen.

Maybe God’s being mean just now,

Maybe I did something wrong to deserve this,

Maybe it’s like a rite of passage -

if I get through this, I’m an adult. Childhood’s gone.

Maybe…

I don’t know. Maybe life’ll be hard from this moment on.

Maybe it’s always been this hard, I’ve just been choosing to ignore it.

I should be studying, passing exams, building the foundations of my career.

But that feels meaningless now, it’s not important.

Nothing makes sense anymore,

And I’m running around trying to find meaning in it all.

Trying to find method in the madness of life

(Yes, it’s similar to a line from Hamlet for those of you who are in my Higher English class)

I’m going to be doing this for the rest of my life,

Trying to find meaning, sense in everything.

I can’t accept it.

All I have to do is try and make myself feel better

By imagining that they’re all in the next room,

Around the corner, waiting.

But a little part of my brain is still trying to nudge it’s way

into the forefront of my mind,

To tell me that all that I believe

Is balancing on the point of a vertical knife

Upon a tower of powdered glass.

I can’t expect anything.

My life so far has taught me that much…

The speakers thud with every heartbeat,

Blaring the endless euphoric sound. Drums. Guitars.

Deep and powerful.

The smoke flows from everywhere,

Pumping out of a gap in the mesh fence,

Forced by some mechanism.

The smoke drifts too from mouths, grey.

It curls before my eyes,

It dances,

It twists and turns, and jumps.

And once it’s energy has been unleashed and rolled,

The smoke lingers. It drifts. It dwells. It poisons.

It waits and watches,

Like someone waiting for their chance,

But not quite knowing what to do or when.

The speakers thud with every heartbeat,

Blaring the endless euphoric music.

A violent song about peace.

Nothing is the same underneath as it looks.

The black paint is sticking to the walls like tar.

The eyes are drooping, watching the floor move,

Under a sea of greasy hair.

Things that should be saved for the bedroom

On display in all directions,

Like a TV show on every channel;

Different faces but the same story, inescapable.

Tedious, like the beat

That repeats and returns, and repeats and returns.

And no-one seems to notice.

They just dance and dance,

Putting on a show of anger, a show of pain

Through a routine of spinning and jumping and leaping and screaming.

Nothing real. Just a show.

Rehearsed yet attempting to pass itself off as spontaneous and random.

I turn away,

To the damp, thin, dark, black

Flourescent corridors,

Echoing songs and reflecting emotions.

There’s a square of pale light at the end of the tunnel

I wander, I stumble down.

But it doesn’t lead anywhere.

When the glistening liquid of the dream

Trickled into my mind,

And spread through it, invading every crevice,

Filling my senses.

It paralysed me lifeless,

My eyes rolling in my head,

And my muscles tensed as I fell into my mind.

Forgetting all notions of the real world,

As I sank into the dream,

Like falling off a pier into a lake of the unknown,

Cool water enveloping me and dragging me

Into its very soul.

So that I lost all memory of the surface,

The unknown around me a blank canvas,

Allowing my mind to paint upon it

The madness within,

Whether it be pleasant or haunting.

It swam though the murk, 

Seeking me out,

While I waited with the silence of the water,

And the water itself in my ears.

I hunted the thought and it hunted me,

In the depths of the mind.

Hours later I’d break the surface,

Floundering and gasping for air.

Then reaching over and hitting the snooze button.

Ran over it with her thumb.

She looked round the unfamiliar hotel room,

But they all looked the same.

Thick sheets, mirror by the kettle,

Bathroom in the corner, biscuits by the teacups.

The smell of coffee was so strong,

It seemed to cling to the closed red curtains,

And drift in the beam of the lamp.

The covers rustled with every breath,

Comforting her in a strange way.

She stumbled to her feet,

Her legs feeling alien after the first night

In a strange bed.

The strands of the carpet briefly hugged her toes,

As they clung for mere milliseconds.

Then an open door, an empty corridor.

The corridors always felt the same,

Whether in Inverness or Northhampton.

Utter aloneness,

Yet at any second, any hotel room door could swing open,

And suddenly there was nowhere to hide.

It created a dubious feeling of nervousness,

Clouding over the fear of being alone

In that room.

She dashed back inside,

Diving under the covers once more,

Her stomach churning like a cement mixer,

Her eyes tight shut.

Alone with the ruffling covers,

And the scent of coffee clinging to the curtains.

In the hope that the pink sky may listen

Or the chirping bird may hear.

My prayer could make or break everything,

Or even worsen my fear.

It could do nothing at all.

The sunlight dims and the streelights sing out

To make up for the loss,

Like tiny prayers trying to make up

For the lack of a god.

Time for inspiration to strike with its forked tongue,

For words to form from the signals of the brain,

And, with any luck, create sparkling magic.

For the stars to fire

Their beams of ideas onto the mere mortals

Thousands of miles below,

Yet there is no up or down in space.

Are the stars above or below us?

Time for the wind to howl songs

Into the vulnerable ears of humans,

And for them to translate these mystic, cryptic whispers,

For the entire world to hear.

And I live within my head,

Attempting to break free of these bonds.

My name means ‘bound’,

Strange really.

I am bound to those I love,

I am bound to writing,

I am bound to trying to discover the meaning(s) of life,

I am bound to one path,

Yet cannot figure out what direction it travels in.

I am bound to the fate of inevitable and eventual death.

I snuggle deeper into the tangled thread,

Feeling my warm breath reflected back into my face,

Watching some of it escape

In a grey cloud, thinning gradually until it blends in

with the surrounding darkness.

Nostrils numb as cold air invades and infects,

Warming as it journeys towards my lungs.

I shiver and look round at the empty bus shelter,

Huddling deeper into my scarf,

My breath reflected back at me,

Reminding me with every shudder that I’m the only one here.