Hello, you

Hello my few remaining followers ❤ I’ve been away for a very long time and not giving you the attention you deserve at all, but tonight I’ve written a poem for you all and I hope you enjoy it ❤

Hello, You – By Ali Carroll

 

Scent of you:

Scent of new and scent of old.

 

Thinking of you, I paste my lips

Against the envelope of letters home.

Ink sinks into me as it sinks into pulp,

And I breathe your notes just as I read them,

Flipping through nostalgia.

 

Twisted in memory the feel of water,

The smell of chlorine in tousled hair.

I remember it as I pass by doors,

Open doors of public pools,

I remember summer.

 

Summer days of sand and sea,

A beach of waving wind and sodden towels,

Picnic baskets with the smell of bread,

I open the bottle and breathe in sun.

 

There’s no space between then and now.

 

I remember the burial when I smell the earth,

Upturned earth on polished wood.

The casket smelled of varnished stain,

But the wind smelled sweet and warm.

 

Fluttering lillies on the arm of your mother,

They kissed you, caressed you and took you home.

 

It’s funny,

That a single drop of men’s cologne

Can break your heart with its static jolt,

Yet bring back to life what’s long been gone:

 

You.

 

You make your home in the hollows of my synapses.

You’re in my nose, my hands, my fading eyes,

Ingrained in me with the sun and the beach,

With the chlorinated waft of heated pools,

And the quiet rake of a stippled beard.

 

I eat your memory on a salivated tongue.

 

I know you’re not here anymore,

But I like to think of you.

 

Inside morning coffee brewed past done,

Inside jean and ballcap oiled hair,

Inside fall and dust and musky leaves,

 

I like to think,

 

That all those little sparkling reminders,

 

Are you inside me saying hello.

 

Hello, you.

 

Orange

It’s been a really long time since I’ve posted anything on here, and to my few wonderful and loyal supporters I apologize, life has been super hectic and busy in art school. But here’s a short story I wrote for a short story class I was able to take, tried to shake some of the rust off while doing it, and it mostly pulled itself together. Enjoy and have a great day!

 

Orange

 

The streetlight shone warm orange through the window and played over the contours of the darkened bedroom.

We collapsed onto our backs, breathing heavily, our limbs intertwined. My heart thudded.

“Well,” he gasped hoarsely.

I gave a throaty laugh and looked at him. “Well,” I agreed.

The light was playing over his features. His crooked nose, his sandy hair and his soft lips. I felt safe looking at him. I put my hand on his cheek and we just smiled at each other for awhile. I let out a small sigh and closed my eyes. “I love you,” he said. I opened my eyes again and he kissed my nose.

“I love you too.” We shifted and he drew me against him with his arm around me so I was looking out the window.

“Sleep well,” he said, and kissed my neck.

“You too,” I said.

We did.

 

The streetlight shone warm orange through the window and played over the contours of the darkened bedroom.

I layed down slowly and grimaced as I shifted the pillow under my neck. I must have pulled it while working. I sighed and flopped around a bit until I found a position that was bearable. A half-hearted moan of complaint came from the dark beside me and Des shifted in his sleep, tugging the sheet closer around him. I’d been staying at work late for the last while and we kept missing each other. I looked over at his silhouetted form for a little, then softly kissed his head and turned back to the window. I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried to quiet the headache I’d been feeling the past few days. There were just so many things to get done. I studied the leaves outside, with their warm halo of yellow-orange, and eventually their soft swaying lulled me into a fitful sleep.

 

The streetlight shone warm orange through the window and played over the contours of the darkened bedroom.

I sat cross legged on the bed and he sat beside me. Neither one of us were looking at each other. Tears filled my eyes, a by-product of most things these days. The dark room still echoed with his last accusation and my outraged counter. The silence stretched out and I brushed away the occasional tear, glittering a blurry orange in my watery vision. I was angry. I could understand him, of course, but if he just pulled himself to-fucking-gether maybe he’d actually realize how unreasonable he was being. I could feel him struggling with something else to say but I refused to help him this time. I’d said my piece.

“Look,” he finally said. “I just need some recognition, okay?”

I pursed my lips. I’d thrown out all my accusations before, it wouldn’t help bringing them up again. “Same,” I said tersely. I couldn’t look at him yet.

He sighed, sensing I wasn’t ready to give. “Tay, you know I appreciate you. You’ve been working so fucking hard – too hard -” I gave him a warning look,“ – how could I not appreciate that. It’s just you’re never here anymore. It’s just hard okay, just recognize it’s hard for me too.”

I didn’t say anything yet.

“Okay?”

Obviously I did, but the hurt from before was keeping me looking out the window at the streetlight and saying nothing. He threw his hands in the air. “Like it’s not like I asked to be let go!” He sunk back against the wall, frustration and a vague helplessness clearly evident in him.

I gave in. I finally looked at him, and shifted over until i was resting on his shoulder, the touching of our bodies an apology and acquiescence of its own.  “I know,” I said softly. I found his hand in the soft light and interlocked our fingers, stroking his with my thumb. “I know.” I looked up at him and he seemed thankful as our lips brushed softly.

“You should get to bed,” He said after a few minutes of quiet. “You have another long day tomorrow.”

I sighed and found my way back to my pillow and under the covers. I did love him. I turned back to him and told him so. “My big project’s done at the end of this month and as soon as you get a job I’ll be able to take fewer clients.”

He laughed bitterly, “Yeah,” he said.

We both fell asleep.

 

The streetlight shone warm orange through the window and played over the contours of the darkened bedroom.

I couldn’t stop giggling.

“What?” he said. “Do you not find me attractive anymore?” He flung his flipper up against his forehead in mock horror, or least he tried to, but it being a flipper, only managed to knock his shark head askew. I giggled even harder. He feigned indignation. “Is it my back? Is there something on my back?” he tried to spin around on his knees on the bed to see the back of his shark costume but got tangled up in his tail fin and tumbled into a chortling heap.

I leaped on top of him with a wicked grin. “No, it is most definitely not your back,” I purred, and I kissed him. I pulled away. “Are you looking forward to dominating the children’s television screens with some incredibly manly shark wisdom tomorrow?”

He growled. “There is only one thing that I’m going to be dominating and it is most definitely not children.” And he flipped me over and finished the kiss, and we both felt hopeful and alive.

 

The streetlight shone warm orange through the window and played over the contours of the darkened bedroom.

I lay fitful in bed. Des hadn’t come home. I tried to tell myself that this was what it was like for him before, but I couldn’t help but feel a little indignant. I’d taken fewer clients so I could be home more, and now he was gone. At some cast gathering with Mina the stage hand.

I punched my pillow then picked it up and buried my head under it. I tried to find comfort in the black heavy suffocating air underneath it.

I sighed and pulled myself back out and looked at the light until sleep found me.

 

The streetlight shone warm orange through the window and played over the contours of the darkened bedroom.

I woke to him thudding the door, tripping over the edge of the bed and swearing. He threw himself down and slid up close to me, groping his hands over me and nuzzling into my neck. He murmured a breathy, “Hey,” that reeked of liquor and I felt a moment of repulsion. He stuck his hand down my pants and started feeling me with his fingers. I grabbed his hand. “Where have you been?” I didn’t ask it like a question.

“Just out.” He drawled in a way that made him sound like a teenager and I hated him for it. He started moving his hand again and I wrenched myself away.

“No.”

He seemed perplexed. Like the concept of me being upset made utterly no sense to him.

“Baby -” He reached for me again and I slapped his hand away. I saw his slow thinking change from confusion to anger. He grabbed my wrist, pulled me down and threw himself on top of me so I would stop pulling away. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Again, like coming home in the middle of the night without any word and waking me up to have sex was perfectly reasonable to him.

I glared at him. “So this is how it’s going to be? You walk in at God knows when from doing whatever the fuck you do nowadays, reeking of alcohol and what I hope to fucking God isn’t your own cigarettes and expect to just have your way with me, hmm? Maybe slap me around a little bit?” His hair hung down into my face and his hot breath panted in and out.

I squirmed my hips mockingly under him and stuck out my chin. “Just fucking do it then.” I stared into his glazed eyes and watched as they eventually cleared. He softly let go of my wrists and flipped off of me, staring up at the ceiling.

A tear leaked out of my eye. He stayed quietly the way he was. I turned away from him and curled into a ball on my side shaking silently. Soon enough I heard him snoring. I gritted my teeth and pulled the covers off of him and wrapped them closely around my trembling form.

 

The streetlight shone warm orange through the window and played over the contours of the darkened bedroom.

Kisses rained down all over my face, showering my eyelids, cheeks and nose with his soft lips. I beamed and laughed. I put my hand on his chest and pushed him away gently. “We don’t know for sure yet, okay?” He grinned back, and hell if his grin didn’t make me smile even harder. I punched him softly. “I’m serious! Don’t go getting your hopes up yet!” He nodded but kept smiling then pulled me into a tight hug that I had to cry out from and remind him I was one of the people who liked to keep their bones intact. loosening his hold a bit, he cradled my head against his chest and sighed.

He took his thumb under my chin and tilted my face up to him. “I love you, Taylor-Ann.”

I sighed and curled more comfortably against him. “I love you too.”

We lay there contentedly feeling each other’s breathing, and even though I’d warned him not to get too excited, a thrill went through me.

 

The streetlight shone warm orange through the window and played over the contours of the darkened bedroom.

His hand was on my stomach. My naked body lay bare in the light and his hand made my stomach look small. It felt like I hadn’t stopped smiling in hours. I was literally carrying life. It was a feeling more electric than I have ever experienced.

I curled my hand over his on top of me and our orange hands made curving shadows over my skin. Looking down at us, at our overlapping limbs, at his thin, toned legs blending with the curve of my own, sinking into our white sheets and splayed in hopeful giddiness, it seemed to me that the orange light seemed brighter than it had. That we were glowing and radiating the light back, that the room was more light than it was shadow. With our hands together on top of my stomach on top of the light, it seemed to me like I could feel the light thrumming around us. I knew it was silly, but in my state of euphoria I could almost believe that the life inside me was that orange light, and I desperately didn’t want to fuck it up.

I squeezed Des’s hand harder and looked at him. He was already looking at me. I think he knew what I was about to say, because he just nodded, and from that, I drew comfort.

I turned onto my side again and pressed against him. I looked out at the streetlight, I looked out at the leaves, I looked out at the wind, and the light playing off of these, and as I fell asleep, my dreams were orange.

It knew

So green, the grass
Plant

So bright and alive
Seeming

In its waterless plant
Pot

Constantly knowing it’s
Fake

Sweater

Intoxication
That first contact.
The smell of you left in sweater,
Unexpected fumes of “this is real”.
You,
Blue,
Warmth.
A sign that didn’t make sense, but ended in us.
Strange.

That Poster on That Window

It was one of those times you knew was going to change you. You knew, as you stood in that particular place, that life would never be the same again.

It was on a window. The object of change: the flat pressed, pixelated, faded and tearing monument of a poster, with the masking tape so inexpertly placed on the inside of the window; window so glass-like and mostly un-fingerprinted; window so fatefully exposing this single poster. But oh, the poster! I was stuck in my tracks, my heels glued to the concrete sidewalk, my calf quivering slightly in shock at the intensity of the revelation the poster had just inspired. What is this life, that these moments can be so happenstance and unexpected?!

I had just gotten out of my dad’s bright red, suped-up ‘Kitchener Clean’ work car, shuffling low and slowly in my brooding way, jingling my keys and mulling to myself, “Gee I wish I wasn’t so burdened with self doubt and insecurity that I feel as though I can’t even sing, or dance without society and the government judging me”, when, like an act of destiny, there it was. Taped to the inside of the window of the Ten Thousand Villages, the poster hung there in all its glory, ‘Sing as if no one is listening, Dance as if no one is watching’. The words burned through my brooding and cynical outer core and into my heart, resonating with meaning. The originality of them had taken me aback, shocking me as the new idea came over me, and I wondered why no one else had ever come to the same revelation. The world would be so great if everyone saw these words. But not to worry; change, starts with you.

I whirled away from the poster and happily marched the rest of the way to the door of the closed office building I was to be cleaning. With a skip in my stride, a hop in my step, I threw the door open to the empty hallway of Ten Thousand Villages, pausing with my chest out and my hands fisted, letting the wind blow my sweater tails and the tumbleweed across the parking lot behind me. I was a new human. The engine of the car was still warm and just clicking off. The memory of the radio song still thrummed in the air. The day was electric and I sucked it all in, eyes gleaming and wild and full of new life. I let the door shut and swaggered forward jauntily, raising my eyebrow to the wall then looking away aloofly. “Hey”, I said through body language. “What’s up?”. I cleared my throat. Silence. Tension. Breathe. Pause for effect. Release.

“I,

HATE,

EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU

WHY,

DO I,

LOVE YOU?

I,

HATE,

YOU,

HATE,

I,

HATE,

YOU,

HATE,

ME,

I,

HATE,

YOU,

HATE,

I,

ME,

YOU,

ME,

I—”

I had kick-ran-jumped far. I stood with one hand holding open an inner door, one foot already inside the revealed kitchen, looking directly at a poor, frazzled and scared deer of an office worker, clutching his mug and glancing nervously at the far door below the word, ‘escape’. After the echoes of my heartfelt ballad stopped ringing throughout the building, and the silence had stretched the required amount of time to achieve palpable embarrassment and the ideal shade of pale crimson light hue on my cheeks, I was able to collect myself enough to blurt out a much too loud, “HI! HOW ARE YOU?”. I’ve seen petrified rabbits do brilliant impersonations of this man at that moment. Only, they may not have bested him at speed of retreat.

Now I could have let this be the end of my revelatory high. The end of an only just begun era of self confidence, destroying minutes worth of personal growth progress. But did I? Did I swear to never sing-as-if-no-one-is-listening-even-if-they-really-really-are and to never dance-as-if-no-one-is-watching-or-thinks-you-are-a-manically-eccentric-demon-teen-chased-by-swarms-of-bees? No, no I did not. And why did I not? Well, because it was just too goddamn hilarious.

Prompt 4 (Creative Non-fiction, 10 min.) : The Worst Date You’ve Ever Been On

I can’t stand it anymore; the influx of men upon men that are all the same and never change.

We sat at the expensive restaurant, I all dressed up and charming, as I counted 11 minutes and 32 seconds since he’d last spoken. We’d been there 11 minutes and 32 seconds. I looked stunning, I mean, damn. And had I heard a single word from him? No. It was like he wasn’t even fully present, didn’t even realize where we were. I need a man who’s decisive, who knows what he wants. The menus came. I ordered and the waiter stood waiting, but the man never ordered, never broke his silence. I decided to look for positives in this man. I’m an artist. Out of silence and contemplation can come brilliant – or at least passable – ideas. Maybe I ought to thank him. Maybe it was his intention to push me, to forward my career, maybe he was incredibly driven himself and was already supportive of my work and enamoured with the process, wanting to be a key part of it. He wouldn’t meet my gaze. I trashed that illusion. It was the worst date ever. It was at that moment that I decided that the kinds with men that don’t exist always are.

Prompt 3 (Creative Non-Fiction, 10 min.) : A Time When You Retreated

It was on the front lines during the Iraqi war. Enemies were closing in all around us, we stood no chance. ‘RETREEEAT! RETREEEAT! FALL BACK TO MINISTIRITTTTTHHHH!’ Faramir cried. And so I did. I woke up. It haunts me to this day, as I casually sip tea in a college class, or during long in-depth conversations with friends. Flash guilt feelings. Why really did I retreat in that dream? Was it because I was scared, or because I knew that Faramir, already so misjudged and un-loved by his own father, would feel immense guilt if our death was on his hands? Was I just doing him a solid, or am I cowardly at center? And then I wonder about the real advantage of bravery and whether cowardice instead is simply realistic. And then that starts me thinking about the meaning of dreams and how Freud’s been all but discredited which brings me back to psychology class where I always drank tea, which brings me back to the present, as I casually sip tea in my college class. I love the days of self discovery.

Prompt 2 (Creative Non-Fiction, 10 min) : Where I live now

An alarm doesn’t have to be obnoxious. It doesn’t have to be a pealing repetitive torture mechanism that causes seizures in every layer of your brain. It can be melodious and building, a sweet and soothing crescendo that opens your lids softly like a mothers touch as you blink the sleep out of your eyes and smile as you hear it thinking ‘Ah what a glorious six thirty am. on a Monday!” But it’s not that. It’s never that. I slam my hand down on the military grade interrogation weapon to silence its shots, and it crashes off its precarious perch growing angrier and louder. I groan. Throwing my arm over the side with my face in the pillow I reach around a little for it and finally manage to maneuver the dial to it’s off position. Mornings. Blankets. Sigh.
Alright, It’s waking up time. I roll out of the coffin sized bed, get up, and run into the wall. Confused, cold, and legs-over-head on the floor, I peer fearfully around at the four tight walls and ceiling compressing me… What the hell? When did I get transferred to solitary in the State Penitentiary? Damn that must have been one hangover. I see a door and ecstatically escape… In to Antarctica. My foot hit the darkened hallway floor and stuck. Chiseling my heal off of the frozen laminate, I whirl back into the cell and pant heavily, collapsing against the hastily closed door. I see my bed, and lie back in it, burying myself under the covers and turning the alarm on snooze. I’ll deal with waking up in ten minutes.

Prompt 1 (Creative Non-fiction, 10 min)

Without limbs, without face, you’re there. You wait for me. Like the most mooning and devoted groupie, you wait. You never wander, you never stray; but remain. And I, I take advantage of that loyalty; that un-swaying presence, and I use you. You offer yourself freely to me with no advantage to yourself but disadvantage, simply because I want you, I need you. You aren’t my only, I must admit. I do not share your ever steady fidelity, there are others and I feel no regret. But I’ll always come back to you. My tea leaves.

I’M BACK

I’m now taking a writing class in college, So will now be posting things from there. Adieu.