Читать книгу She Must Be Mad: the bestselling poetry debut of 2018 - Charly Cox - Страница 9

It was sticky in your apartment

I stuck my eyes to every corner

Where you’d stuck up old postcards

An entire museum of your life and more a

Window

Framed the shrilling stuck-up summer silhouettes in the pub down below

You stuck a scratched record on

That played the once smooth staccato

You poured me a glass of wine

That slipped sticky to my sides

That slipped your fingers across my thighs

I felt stuck

This time I promised myself I wasn’t giving up

You said stick around

And I cleared off the dark sediment red wine muck

From my lips

And kissed you in a way

That begged to reverse ownership

But instead it sellotaped my wrists

Together tight around your hips

Whilst my internal monologue screamed:

You’re hopeless at this

You don’t want to do this

You always do this

You don’t have to be this

Person

You don’t have to quench your thirst on

Him

Tell your body its anxiety isn’t a passion to burst on

Him

Don’t try and fill the void with empty consumption

This moment in time that you’ll lie and say was sweet seduction

Was another episode of you orchestrating a personality reduction

Into a girl you have no business being

No pleasing being

Stop teasing feeling

From an inner drought

That only dried to be that way

Because you gave all your kindness out

Instead of spending it on yourself.

I stop as your eyes unstuck from mine

You swig from the bottle of wine

And I muster up the courage to say

I don’t want to be just tonight

I’ve said it before and let it be denied

And you laugh with a cocksure sigh

And hit me with another line like

Why can’t you just be a girl for a good time?

And it’s the just that juts

And ricochets

And it slaps stuck

To my ongoing conflict with myself

I reach for a souvenir placed on your shelf

Throw it between my palms

Imagine what false comfort I’d find within your arms

And put it back

I give learning from lessons a crack

I stop myself from telling you that you’re such a twat

When you text me the next morning

To say my excuse as a woman is appalling

For leaving in a rush

It was sticky in your apartment

And it was there that I realised

I was bored of being stuck

As a girl whose muchness amounted to just

The night.