Fishbones

undoing some other stitcher's work
i needle-picked the nerves from your spine
punctured your fat balsamic pool eye
and what did you give?
a little comb inside.

Short little musing on one of the weirdest things I have probably done. My GCSE art project was based on the stimulus 'land, sea and sky' - from this I was obviously inspired to buy two whole seabass from Morrison's fishmongers, take them home and photograph them under harsh desk lamp light.

 My thinking at the time was that the light would catch the glimmer of fish scales. Upon reflection, the images came out more like gritty crime scene photography from an ITV procedural (with a particularly piscatorial victim). Then came the crazed idea that only the bones would do - I stewed the little fish bodies in the biggest kitchen pot till their flesh scraped off. In an effort for the skull, I took to the eyes with a sharp prick and watched them deflate. The kinder egg surprise of a perfect fish spine through all the fleshy gunk was a satisfying one. I kept the skeleton on my desk for months after.

I walked out of Year 11 with a grade seven in art. My teacher had been careful to praise my 'great eye for composition' and not the manic content of my work. I was not a challenging or profound artist, I think I was just a bit odd. Oh dear. Please find photographic evidence attached.

Dressing the Part

What is the latest time in the day that you can still wear pajamas and it still be considered socially acceptable? 

Without realising it, I have been conducting this experiment. I should clarify - it is that horrible slog of the summer holidays (my penultimate summer holidays, I should add) when time moves like treacle and you forget what day of the week it is. There is the overhanging pressure of ought, those things you really ought to do, and they hang over you with such a weight that little tasks become massive chores. Even getting out of my pajamas this week has become a Sisyphean task.

My deluded self-reasoning is: why bother to change to something else when in a matter of hours, you'll be back in pajamas?  In fact, why bother at all, with anything? Freshly washed hair becomes dirty. A made-up bed becomes unmade hours after. When you decide to stay in your pajamas, everything becomes utterly, utterly futile. 

But reader, rejoice! I am writing this in genuine, real-life actual-person clothes (they are comfy enough to be pajama-adjacent, but this does not detract from the victory). I am atop a fully made bed with washed hair. I have pushed a boulder up a mountain. 

I have a deep hatred for the profit-driven, unimaginative slop that is self-help literature and all the shit it peddles, but 'dress for the job you want'? Okay, okay, they may have been on to something there. It seems I have spent the last week looking for work experience as a duvet tester. But now in my regular clothes I have sat down an written something, I have done some of those oughts and laughed at how small they were. I am not quite the perfect productive student yet, but I have decided I will at least dress the part.

On Sobering Up

My sister was born with a brain defect that I was lucky enough not to inherit, despite our shared womb. It has left her with a selective memory, particularly of every time she swears she will 'never drink again'. But last night was my turn, I had insisted. So far, it was looking to be - I had just hit that lovely part of tipsy when it buzzes in the base of your skull, like dunking your brain in an electric footbath. But then she turns to me and says something in that definitely-not-drunk voice. Oh God. She relaxes her face as much as possible, but her wide vibrating pupils betray her state. My foot-spa-fizz short circuits.

Doctors are yet to explain this medical phenomena in which the same digestive system that cannot weather one M&S canned cocktail without a slight wibble can suddenly metabolise much vaster quantities in a period of 25 milliseconds. My own diagnosis is that there is some primitive hard-wiring in my brain that commands to look after your litter-mates when they appear in danger. This would be highly utile in an era when humans lived in caves. Maybe I'd save her from a mammoth attack. However, in the 21st century this instinct has no use except for ruining my partying.

My nervous system involuntarily stopped the fuzzy warmth of rum with a somber gavel strike. I felt serious, like a Russian novel, a grandfather clock. I sat on stairs outside the bathroom whilst she was getting a little bit of the alcohol out of her system. Out the way it came. I had been barred from entering, as she was now being assisted by the party's forgiving host. I was like a man from the nineteen forties in a hospital waiting room anticipating the birth of his child, bouncing leg, bowler hat on his lap. 

So what is it Doc?' I turned to ask at the door's creak.

'Oh just getting some air. She's thrown up again.' 

I thought of a thousand lectures that I would give her when she sobered up. Lectures are what I am particularly good at, as I have mastered the circus act of constantly being on a high horse and having a stick up my arse. And lecture her I did. Obviously the catharsis of that was not great enough, as here I am expelling it on to the page as well. She is recovered, if suffering a blow of hangxiety. And she swears she will never, ever drink again. 

Requiem for A Childhood Pet

 We marched, a procession robed in

Millets and Craghoppers

And open-toed sliders, past the clicking knell of the

Do Not Open Gate

Into the garage where we keep the dead things:

Rollerblades, Lego sets, certificates,

Little white rabbit -

Beach towel shroud. 

Her broken little foot, rotten luck

Her weepy little eye, sticky dry

We put it all in the ground.

I walked, back to the wendyhouse where I

Could reach the top cupboard 

And all of the lights.

This is my first (very rudimentary) attempt at poetry. My little white rabbit was very aptly called Paige, and we adopted her when I was ten years old.  She was put down at the vets after breaking her foot, some smirking irony. We held something in the shape of a funeral in the garden, my dad as gravedigger. We traded traditional funeral garb for rustling outdoor raincoats and sliders that slapped the wet grass. The bordering ridiculous ritual made us laugh, if guiltily, at the whole ordeal. I couldn't help but feel on the awkward return inside that my 'childhood' as it were had gone down the garden with her, that that was the end of that. But before I let myself to feel too profound and grown-up, I looked down to the hot chocolate I was soothing myself with. Not quite grown up yet!