Every piece of the party was perfect
The way you stood on the doorstep, the strength of your nerves melting even the hardest heart
The look on your face as I came down the stairs
The compliment for mother, delicate as the flower you’d placed on my wrist
Your back, so straight and strong father almost salutes
The car at the kerb with you holding the door
Slipping silently through the streets, reaching nervously for your hand
Your chest swollen with pride as I take your arm
On the dancefloor, your hand on my back, sparks from your fingertips against my skin
The looks of the other girls
Every piece of the party was perfect
Except the powder you put in my drink
Category: snippet
JD and Coke
I found myself sitting at my desk this morning wondering about the guy I’d passed on my way there. At five past nine he’d been walking away from the city, drinking a pre-mixed can of JD and Coke. Was he, I thought, a shift worker trying to smooth out the bitterness of his circadian rhythms before a well deserved sleep, or had it been Hobson’s choice; all there’d been in reach this morning? No bag, hands otherwise empty; he swigged steadily from the single can that surely must have been opened only moments before.
I thought about him so much that I went to the supermarket to check. Three hundred and thirty millilitres. Thirty three centilitres. Two pounds a can and five percent proof. One point seven units of caffeinated alcohol. This is not a morning drink. This is not a just before bed drink. It’s not a just-the-one drink. This is a getting-ready-to-go-out drink, a wake-me-up-before-you-go-go drink. And yet, there he was, a solitary figure with a solitary can, on a grubby September morning with spots of rain in the air.
Sour times
The sour tang of a decade of night sweats rose from the pillow.
Fingers inc.
His hands were nut brown and deeply lined; outdoor hands, prematurely aged by strong sun and salted wind. But not working hands; his cuticles and nails were so neatly kept that each shone like a polished coral coin, the pink stark against the dark of his skin.
Doing it right
The afternoon after the morning before.
Feelings
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this fucking Wednesday on a Wednesday.
Just so stories
I mean, just like everyone else I get a jolt of excitement when the spine of a notebook lines up with the edge of a desk, but I’m not the kind of weirdo who keeps nudging it till it does.
Gleaming
I listened to their gleaming chatter, watched their eyes begin to slip and slide. I saw the needy sips of water, felt their knees begin to jump and sway. Oh how I’d missed this.
Smoke ’em if you got ’em
The music got a little brighter, the sky a little richer, the lawn a little sweeter, the laughter a little more mine.
On the beach
The smell of skunk mingled with wood smoke, sea salt and sun block.