rotting teeth + good times

processing newness

(passion fruit for the walk home)

When was the last time I truly wrote something? Not edited, not re-worked, but sat on the living room floor and meant what I said to my journal? Maybe I’ve put it down because I'm content, hopping from place to place in Dalston and starting my days in the afternoon. All the illumination I could possibly need is bottled up in those streetlights (new eyes or new parts of town?) I've been smiling giddy, watching my friends stagger and stumble under the lamp posts in their sparkly tops and their freshly washed hair.

I don't notice or write in the way I used to- this is reconfiguration of a new kind. This is the step after the growing pains where the existential bone marrow is revealed. When I run my tongue over my mouth I can feel the heat where something was generated (names and gut feelings and vowels mumbled), and the desire paths forged where words escaped between mouthfuls of food and smoke and spit. I can feel the places where the words unsaid collected and grew a foul resentment just behind my molars. I know that all of my headaches are rooted in my jaw, all of the tension that sits in my temples originated in my teeth.

I am waiting to be asked about my pitfalls, the tragedies that have befallen me in my two-decades, and everything that has ever made me dig my nails into my palm. Instead, talk turns to the red heat lamp mimicking a mediterranean evening, and you let me sit on the side where I can see all the people, my favourite side. My clothes feel right on my skin and I'm not red-pen striking through anything I've said, nor am I putting my between-the-lines literacy to the test. It feels good laying back and letting time be a flat circle, not counting the days or things I owe you- not the words, not the pleasure, not the grand sentiments. We're always even.

I am constantly in disbelief at the quiet solidarity between us that doesn’t demand much but gives plenty. It’s an easy companionship that doesn’t put me on the defence or make me feel particularly big or small: I’m not attached to the scale of things. Still, your sense of righteousness is loud in the most modest way, I can feel that none of you is plastic, nothing of this is performative. It’s the strangest thing- I find myself thinking that I would trust you if you became a millionaire. There is an undeniable decency to you that comes so naturally, but that I have yet to encounter- I make sure to be true in return.

When I speak, I don’t always know which words to emphasise, or which way I mean things. I just know that I mean all the words equally- all the ‘and’s and ‘so’s and ‘then’s hold just as much weight as all of the descriptors. When I look back, it isn’t just the descriptors I see. All of the connecting moments hold just as much weight: on my doorstep, the interval at the playhouse, the walk back from Angel, silent white gardenia breeze, waiting for my chips.

Old times used to be my undercurrent, rushing and shoving time forward. I was living to get away from the past, pushed forcefully by the fear, like kinesis, of what would happen if I stopped running. Poking through the surface and stinging like splinters. The heat of running away makes the memories going cold feel like a relief to your head of sweat, but they only serve up the same nausea they did before. 'Put it to bed,' I think, ‘garner up some new mind.’ Now I'm watching all my friends spill into my flat, all of your friends onto the balcony, all my inhibitions onto the high street where I am skipping, hand never in my own pocket. 'Delightful, no less,’ traffic light tells me to cross, ‘Good god, delight!’