Monday 13 July 2015

Liverpool is my cousin


The sky was spotty on the day I decided that Liverpool was my cousin. Matted, dotted, ruffled. Rippled. Stippled. Like a light drizzling of rice pudding on a sky-blue plate.
It was a long day; it had lasted almost a week at this point already. I had just discovered my second ever friendship toilet and was extremely excited by the idea of this mode of relieving oneself in the company of a friend becoming a veritable trend in the city I had learned to love. 


The thought of performing pieces of my mind to a public audience had been occupying the edges of dreams and the fringes of possibility. To this end, I had attempted to organise some words of fiction in a paper-bag-brown notebook. But everything that dribbled onto the pages in red ink was a semblance of the actual truth and not at all fictional enough. Truth not in a sense of a lesson to be learnt or a moral to be taken away, but truth in a crude sense, in that all the words on paper were also words in my mind.


Around the middle of this week-long day I mused that I might need a different canvas, and broke several pencils attempting to pen poetry on one of the walls enclosing my modest back yard.
Two days later, when the evening had finally arrived, the black lines on the back of my hand seemed to suggest that sleep was indeed a viable option.


Whilst I was furnishing my night-water with ice, however, I suddenly realised that the word bedtime had become increasingly meaningless over the last week or so (was it still just a day? I could no longer be sure), prompting me to stay sedentary in the back yard on a wicker chair that pressed its intricate pattern into the backs of my bare thighs.

A whole week later, the day was still ongoing; the sky refused to turn dark and instead alternated pleasing shades of pink and red in a display I was quite sure was intended expressly for my viewing pleasure.


As the world started to fold in on itself, I realised I had ceased to be the centre of my own universe, and that I may just end up outside of the fold. The gaping abyss slowly and appreciatively swallowed up chunks of the city, and the only group that could be seen to be paying any sort of attention was a drove of passing fire extinguishers. I think I even heard some applause as two tiny streaks of dark blue finally crept into the darkening sky, and it was only then I decided that Liverpool was my cousin.



The End x


(All photos by Chucky)