27,301 Yahoo emails and none of them from Robert Pattinson, sigh.
“Tell me about yourself,” my date asked. His jawline was sharp, gaze sharper and so I was blunt.
“I’ve got such trapped wind right now.”
Yeah. Yeah. He’s not my date anymore.
What Am I?
There are so many things I could tell you about myself. That’s true of all of us. So where do we begin? How do we choose? What defines our most notable attributes? What makes certain things more worthy of knowing than others? Where is our value derived?
And that got me thinking. A book is valuable not because of a single page, but because of the entire story…
When she’s not busy snacking, that is. And sometimes during.
Honestly, I tend not to reference myself in the third person — as though I am some omnipresent narrator observing myself from a faux leather recliner somewhere, a bowl of sweet and salty popcorn perched in my lap. To me, that would be like commentating the life of a parallel version of myself. And I’d like to think she spends a lot less cash on jars of peanut butter and Rick and Morty merchandise (only because that means there’s more left out there for me!).
But anyway. In the words of one Joseph Francis Tribbiani; how you doin’?
Me? I’m…
Em-bellishments
They can and they do — but they don’t have to
A month ago, science discovered a potential fifth fundamental force. In 2020, the coronavirus flapped it’s wings in our direction. Last May, Elon Musk named his child X Æ A-12 — on purpose.
It seems that plot twists are happening all the damn time. And I think I’ve found another one.
As a writer, I’m prone to a Creatistential Crisis™ (like an existential one, but creativity based. Sponsored by Crayola). The same way tyres get punctures and beekeepers get stung, we writes get pierced in the soul by the sharpened nib of the perplexity pencil, until we’re left bleeding out…
Learn how to handle the non-linearity of life
Days are not linear. They’re consecutive, sure, but they’re never linear.
How can they be when we have two 10:30’s? When we have a sunrise and a sunset? When we have staircases that are scaled both upwards and back down? That sounds like a whole lot of curvature to me.
Granted, days objectively move forward. One after the other, they accumulate, pile up, unfold outwards. …
A poem about distanced love
The wifi begins to cooperate,
A thousand pixels are now in sight.
Chunky, thick, not at all HD.
“You’re not looking too sharp tonight.”
He knows just what she means of course,
Though his grin still pierces the screen.
Even when composed of rigid squares,
His face is destined to be seen.
“It’s now six weeks and counting,” he says,
“And I’ve forgotten how to dress.”
His jumper is stained and unthreaded.
“Yeah, you do look quite a mess.”
But she doesn’t really mean it,
Because chaos itself is still art. …
The Horcrux Hack™ to living forever.
All I’m saying is, Robert Pattinson got it right.
Not just the whole “be exceptionally handsome, chaotic and a practical kitchen utensil (that jawline could slice any root veg)” kind of right. Nor his decision to refuse any and all workouts whilst prepping for his role as the new Batman. But actually, his other bat variant. His vampiric self.
That man is immortal.
That man — both as his vampire fictional character and his very own, real life self — will live forever, because he has left his (bite)marks all over this damn planet. In his work, in his fans…
Writers, soldiers, children, they all need one thing: a good nap.
War sounds like it sucks.
Massacre. Murder. Death. Destruction. Running — no thank you. Don’t get me wrong, along with it comes bravery and nobility and sacrifice, but I mean, for what? All this seemingly pointless suffering, for what? What can war achieve that an hour’s sit down can’t? Shuffle a couple open-minded, compassionate and patient leaders into a quaint seaside cafe and encourage them to listen, to talk it out, to compromise, to see things from one another’s perspectives, to figure things out and resolve issues calmly, kindly and most importantly, without shooting another human.
Probably sounds unrealistic, but…
A poem about letting go
I stopped counting a while back,
As each milestone weighed on my chest.
I stopped hoping when you said so,
I’ve been pretty hopeless, you see. At best.
I stopped waiting when the wait times,
Became mere intervals on the clock.
I stopped dreaming when my subconscious,
Found herself at this mental block.
I shut down my heart when the rent,
Was too stark a price to pay.
You hadn’t stepped foot inside the premises,
Though I stayed open all hours, each day.
I gave up on all the wishing,
When the shooting stars were shot down. …
A poem about love (and hate) and love
You ever loved somebody that boils your blood,
And yet they set your soul alight?
An infatuation inferno right there in your heart,
That can been seen by those with poor sight?
A finger unfolding right into the lens,
A love-hate language of bullying glee.
Oh man do we know how to dish it out,
So tasty it could serve a breakfast — or three.
Morning messages of hate, and sprinkles of love,
But mostly hate — because we love that.
A document of a lifetime spread across seas,
It’s a safe distance from her for my cat.
She said…
We need to figure out the serving size of goodness
“Good morning,” I say to my ginger cat as I pass her clawing maniacally at the staircase.
“Have a good day!” the Costa server says to me as I walk out with my chai oat milk latte (don’t look at me like that, I’m romanticising life).
“Hope you’re having a good weekend,” says the last line of the email from the tattoo artist I’d enquired to a few days prior (getting a barcode tattooed onto my thigh that links to all the Twilight movies in full, just fyi).
“Buenas noches,” I whisper up at the moon, because I’m sure she’s…
Emily Wilcox
I imagine in a parallel universe I might be a caricaturist or a botanist or somewhere asleep on the moon — but here, I am a writer.
