Young Writers Society

And all I wanted was the simple things
A simple kind of life
And all I needed was a simple man
So I could be a wife

sitting for exams is one of the sexiest things you can do.
look at kristy: bent over the paper, her caramel hair
scratching the page. from here i can see her confident,
sloping autograph but it's all a blur. she's sharing
secret grins across the room, her toffee eyes
glinting in the naked light of the hall.
even the supervisor tries to get her attention,
and he must be over fifty. it's a seductive thing.

look at wes: casually filling up lines with abstract
terms that simply look right, his cinammon neck
steaming. makes me want to [pre]r u n[/pre]
my finger along it. he's smiling at kristy and cracking
unmemorable jokes which fizz along her spine like soft drink.
even the supervisor's chatting and laughing with him,
and she must be over fifty. it's a sensual thing.

i was peeling dried glue off my fingers and
self-assuredly making bridges out of spaghetti and
thick, pasty glue because exams are over and
we do stainlessly nothing for the rest of the year.
mr jones was cracking jokes with me because i think
he thought i cared. i don't.

tranquil, moonlit curtains flicker and breathe
in and out and in and out, it's a harmonious rhythm
that twists my mouth into a mellow smile.
out on the street, metropolitan fifteen-year-olds
are sucking bootleg nightlife in through a straw.
i'm hooked up to a strappy black thing
covered by bottle-green schoolgirl get-up
which hides me from their welling eyes.
magnetic gashes across my delicate skin.
curves of burning and frictional clingings
to brown torsos, knife-defined muscles.

for years i've caught the same bus home.
for years i've been the same ex-girlfriend.
for years i've been dreaming past the
reflections, past the radio rings, the richochets of red.

all my todays leak of are books with
shiny green covers, earth-brown eyes
and bottle caps in my pockets, chinking
illegally as i walk into science. he grins.
asks me to count them. and i toss them onto
the desk, watch them spin and fall flat.
he lets out a low whistle. "not too bad."
i can still recall the brash, intimate swirls
of liquid which sloshed from those glass bottles.
he does too. he remembers me at three am
and i remember him at one am. we laugh.

i told him about my past. he knows the bus
i catch most afternoons, and how i look out
the window, making my eyes burn into the glass.
he knows how my eyes can burn through
flesh; he's experienced it and it made him sweat.
he knows that guy of my past and his boardshorts.
he's never seen him, but i saw him clench
his fists when i told him about him. he asked
about our hot closeness and i was evasive.
he knows about my dreams, how they come in
short, incoherent spits of boiling murder.
how i jolt up at night. he's seen it in action,
felt the sweat on my body after i woke up
crying from a burst of nighttorture, soothed
me back to sleep simply by lying and breathing
and muttering tired, soft calmness into my shoulder.

Now all those simple things are simply too complicated for my life
How'd I get so faithful to my freedom?
A selfish kind of life
When all I ever wanted was the simple things
A simple kind of life
written: Thursday 11th November 2004, 3:49pm.