i have moved

to here. maybe it's better, maybe it's not:

http://jennybrowne.tumblr.com/

almost airbourne

you can walk to the ends of the earth if
you'd like. i don't mind. i need you like
i need air. it's funny how i can't help
myself. i look to the wall and see paris
and imagine us under a pastel duvet.
i'll bring you marmite on toast in bed
every morning, stroke that bit by your
ear which sends shivers down your
spine and tell you that falling in love
with you was my best idea yet

464,200

i watched as clouds from the west
collided with an aeroplane from the
east in the window reflection across
the street. dulling rows of red brick
marring my view each morning. i
did not ask for a perfect panorama.
i did not recieve one. in this dirty
city i live and breathe. but there is
no oxygen. only bulletproof shop-
fronts, industrial palaces and Floyd
who sits in a filthy puddle of his own
lost memories outside the university.
i roll him cigarettes and he tells me
that i remind him of the wife he once
had. it is entirely subjective, this city.
i wake up for the day but it is already
dark. i still lose my way, but finding
things by accident is better. i found
myself by accident. i don't get scared
anymore walking home at 5am.
daddy said i'm a big girl now

forgetting to post thank you letters

she's wilting like a dying rose, just not dead yet,
not quite yet;
i don't want to be counting down days on fingers
- i never had piano hands like yours anyway -
i always swallowed my food hard in her presence.
but she's a mother and a lover who has
lived a life inside a tupperware box
NEVERBEENFREE
but now she
can't get out of bed on her own
can't shower without slipping and
breaking - so like that fragile soap dish
from the charity shop.
mother cried and held me this morning
and said they're taking her away;
she wanted to die at home.
cooked meals tasted like plastic
my socks stuck to kitchen laminate
house looked like christmas
but this year was her last and
i still haven't seen her

i said that i would write one for you

he is the boy who always
listens when nobody else will

i am the girl who waits until
everybody else has left the
house just so i can let every
syllable that escapes his
lips consume every
corner of my mind

he is the boy who empties
words that he cannot say
to anybody else unto me

i am the girl who feels
the same, nods and
echoes the pain

he is the boy who tells me
that he cannot bring himself
to love his father because his
father refuses to love him

i am the girl who wants the
boy to be loved, because
he loves everything else
in this world so fiercely

he is the boy who dances
under the sun and kisses
under the moon

i am the girl who watches
and smiles and knows
that i will never have
anything quite like
that again

he is the boy who tells me
that not even the people
he could spend hours and
days and weeks with will
ever understand him

i am the girl who will
always understand

he is the boy who is
judged for something he
is not

i am the girl who is judged
for something that i am

he is the boy who will
never refuse to stop loving
even if miles of grey tar mac
stand in the way

i am the girl who will never
be able to behave herself
the way in which he can

he is the boy who loves the
right way

i am the girl who can never
fight drunken desire

he is the boy who tells
me that everything will
be just fine

i am the girl who could
never have asked for words
like these from anybody
else's mouth

he is the boy who listens
to the story that i have
only ever told a few people
and says that i can fight it

i am the girl who will
fight it

he is the boy who will
fight it
too

letter to my mother

i'm never going to send this; i
don't let you read
anything
because it makes me feel better,
but also worse, like the day i
read those letters you'd
written, hidden away in the dark
somewhere
in a private folder
private
from me
private
from any eyes, but
i still read them
because

i am a bad daughter;
i forgot
about Mother's Day this year
i forgot
to buy you flowers
to take you for a walk
somewhere quiet, where
the brown of the mud on the
bottom of your old walking boots
matched the colour of the leaves
of the oaks and the cedars.
i forgot
to take you out for lunch where
i would pay even though the dessert alone was
six pounds twenty
and i still hadn't found
a job. and this,
this
is all because
i am not a good daughter
like i was back then, if i
ever even was one

because now i have
moved out
and
i'm cooking my own meals,
drinking too much coffee and
hiding within the walls of
myself; i've lost
count of the cigarettes
even though i know that the smell
of them on his shirt collar
makes you sick, you having to sleep
in an ashtray for a bed. but
i love it here. i love being
so far away
and
not having to be home on time
not having to let you use the computer
not having to wipe down the table
load the dishwasher
listen to your arguments
sit at the top of the stairs and
overhear him screaming
at the baby, - she doesn't know any
better, does she?

- but this is not to say that i don't
miss you. i just prefer it when you treat me
like a grown up; talk to me about
politics
and
journalists
and
his mother's terminal cancer
because i do understand, i
really do. i like it when we
lean against the radiator and i
put an arm around you - because
i am so much taller now - and
i lean in and feel your
whisps of grey hair fall against
my cheek, and you read me articles about
cheap red wine
george clooney - your favourite
silver fox - and how expensive clothes
are from the Saturday paper.

please don't ever believe that you are
useless
or
not worth something
because you are, regardless of the
things he says sometimes when
he's full of Jameson's that make me want
to dirty my fists. you are the
cleverest person i know. i wish
to be like you
as strong as you
as ever-dissatisfied as you. you
have been through more shit than
anyone else i know. you are
better
than anyone else i know, and i want
to be able to know what all of these
long words mean when my kids
are reading Milan Kundera
and ask me to be
their dictionary. i want them to
admire me as i have always
admired you,

i hate it when we
break down, because
W E A R E N O T A B R O K E N F A M I L Y;
we just need
T I M E
and
P A T I E N C E
and
E A R S
and
H E A R T S
to calm down and
stop fucking about. i promise
to stop if he stops and she stops too,

so please can we not have
Christmas this year - can we just
learn to love eachother again?

untitled II ,

i have been thinking about
how recently i have become something new
how i have been packed into boxes and driven away from you
how one hundred miles of tarmac now stand between us
how my body cries out for you in the night and i bite the corners of my duvet and wish that my skin felt as soft as yours
how you used to fill up the empty space in my bed each afternoon
how we could lie in deafening voids of silence
how i could never look in your eyes, and
how everything i have just written is completely irrelevant because
i want only you