YAAAAAWWWP

Worst exams over. Liberation - though there remain the clanging chains at the heel - I can taste the abandon in the gale, and now I shall seek a mirage to tempt the thirst back in my tongue.

pre-flight stress

and things have become to mean less - sitting sipping my cup of coffee with a permanent scowl and an imaginary pipe and walking stick with an eagle’s head in gold and a foxskin cape and Venetian mask - all is mist and perhaps a faint whiff of a decadent continental breakfast - runny fried eggs smoky sausages white chocolate croissants and all - reading Tolstoy feeling superior: I scorn you, you meaningless life

Birthdays are so stressful.

Going back again tonight. There is this uncomfortable fluttering in my stomach - all the work still to finish.

Another year.

And that’s it. No goodbyes. Because there will come another time for reunion. Because you looked away. Because I couldn’t find your face. Because I didn’t want to look at your face, for fear I wouldn’t be able to turn away. Because I am a proud, horrible person feigning nonchalance when really I am being an utter fool. Because you wouldn’t care anyway, not as much as I do. Because I cannot bear it. Now I know I shall wallow in self-hate for another six weeks, but I regret to say that I will never, ever muster the courage to admit affection, so you will probably never know. So no goodbyes.

I no longer feel - I look at you with the same detached interest as I would look at an old pipe of a revered revolutionary at a museum.

the past 7 weeks

1. 6-hour canapé preparation

2. Gym

3. Conclusion: analysis is irrelevent

4. Camping: cooking over campfires - sausages, veggie casserole, potatoes, dough balls, berry crumble; starry nightskies; sleeping bags on mattresses in tents; affirmation of worst fear: climbing

5. Berlin: currywurst, museum, Reichstag, graffitied remnants of the Berlin Wall, cyclists, concentration camp, all the photographs of not all the people, prison, memorials, a poem, apple strudel, the best spaghetti carbonara I have ever had

argh can’t sleep can’t sleep can’t sleep longing most fervently for morning camomile tea and honey sausages and fried eggs with a dash of tabasco oh yes please when will the day begin so i can breathe again the radiator isn’t even on and yet still i can’t breathe the curtains are drawn no breeze no noise all is suffocating stillness