Minutiae
 

It’s about the happiness.

Just that.  Simple, isn’t it? 

It’s all about the swings and roundabouts

The crushing blow, the crushing high

The filament flashing, the velvet sliver

Ribbon of song.

Ice cream float, snap, rubber boat

Watch hands run to mad hatters’ hat-glue

And you cry out, just because

You can.

The inner light,

The butterfly that’s caught inside your chest –

The burn the itch that as you scratch you twitch and flinch

But still, you feel alive.

Rustle; leaves or chocolate wrappers, paper crisps and fire blankets

The way a necklace falls at collar-bone-height and she sips her wine

She smokes her cigarette

And makes it look so easy.

Crochet, fireworks, the hole in the hedge in the maze in the grounds of that house

When you were five

Crayons, greens and blues and yellows – not the red or threads of wool

And nipping needles, creased and wrinkled knuckle bones

Soaring colour – unwise journey, tired cliché

Bruised and blurred unsure of sounds you thought

You heard, but maybe not.
Otherwise the grey cells turn inwards.

Tick tick tick tick

All day, all night

How can you be so alive inside and feel so dead?

Yeah you bleed just to know you’re alive that’s what he said

T.S. had it right, disintegration, isolation, and TVs flick across the nation

Faster better harder stronger

And she always says it better than I do

We push the circle, out out out

New high and harmful hard to handle, butter popcorn

Pick-me-up-let-me-down.

Watch me and we’ll stumble on the rim together.

Count the pennies, pick hair and split it, minutiae

Play scrabble, watch him out the corner of your eye but

Pretend not to.

Anything to get through the day.
 

© Gemma Knight