On my way to - but not quite yet - being thoroughly boozed, still exhausted in my bones, and not ready to retire that exhaustion: these first words I've written in months and months: 'hello!', I greet them: 'welcome!', signs from myself. a weather report from the farthest darkest place: 'what's news from HQ?' // and mostly sad - a week or two more it'd all have come together, all the stars would like up and I'd see their secrets, the invisible things that hold them in place and the invisible things that turn them and I'd leave here a champion - the winner of hunger-games, the most standing-est gladiator. As it is I leave in a whisper of mediocrity: another kid who's top of the list somewhere else but here populates the T-curve: the T-curve is hungry. that hump doesn't fill itself [gasp - as he sips]: "I'm sorry to be smoking again" she says, "I really thought I' be able to hold out" she says, as she stares at her cigarette, the guy besides her puffs some smoke and agrees, they look at me expectantly... "so what's the secret in your room? you spend enough time in it". i just smirk "you can't count the dead bodies I've hidden. I shed glass bottles like dragons' scales. open a drawer shelf cabinet glass bones tumble out: lost imaginary things you can look straight through and find magic lost kingdoms on the other side, how much I wish I could sleep through the whole night" his voice trails off at the end: // "hey" she says, he grumbles "I didn't sleep very well babs", "I know" she says "you pushed me and turned over all night -" "-I'm soz" "-I know I know, and you mumbled about intangibles and and Locke and nemerus claws-" "-clausus-" "-what?" "numerus clausus" "that. all night." how sad. exams a week done and still the ghosts of property-theory and un-perfectly-planned essays chase my supine shadow to the ends of sunrise. as I clutch my pillows and sweat into my sheets. // "what's so scary about mediocrity?" I'm just me I guess. That's the scary thing - that I am no more than myself. We aspire to be such great many huge things. But we're just... Q. just plain, old Q. "Is that not enough?" "Who knows. What's that Q-guy one anyway?" // at night the bugs are anxious to get into my room and buzz around. For weeks I'd wait until 2am before closing the windows and taking a 10 minute break to chase the shadows and shatter their limbs against the wall. Tissue after tissue full of corpses. I'd smash soo hard my wrists would hurt and then I'd sit at my desk, stuffy motionless light, sip at my sleep-nectar-bourbon and mourn all the life that I'd taken. The sanctity that I'd deprived the world of. Then I'd lean forward and try to force-feed another few paragraphs into my brain. Maybe orange-juice, maybe vitamin C will open a few more neurons to retain things. And keep sipping. About 3am is a good time to stop. Strawberry pop-tarts (because they are always cheapest at the store, otherwise I prefer blueberry) to console me. eyedrops to help the stinging eyes while I wait. no excuse for the mane of hair. terrified by the black bags hanging around. the stumbled walk. the strange senselessness: confused between hot-and-cold, excitement-and-fatigue, hungry-and-full - lost between chapters and books and terrified that if my wrist seises up this week how will i write the exams? seisin: the entitlement to be put into possession of land - ownership and possession, conceptually mixed at English common law from the beginning. to hold and to have. Now I know that those two ideas are not the same. "you pushed me" she says "so I stroked your head." "What did I do?" "Nothing, you shook your head and then crawled into my chest". it is quiet there I want to say. there are no distractions there i want to say. (there is no [__] future there I want to say.) // it's been months; that's a good thing. it's best if i'm as far away from you as possible, you do horrible things to me; but I really want to know: are you a harmonica virtuoso yet? that's all I want to know // "- I know what you mean, what a beautiful line; there's that Ted Hughes line - do you know it it's similar?" (i don't) "oh. it's: this house has been far out at sea all night "