{I have been struggling to write for a while. I keep starting pieces and getting stuck, loosing the thread, not finding the right space or time to write. Fidgeting. Yesterday I just decided to sit down and start typing. It had been raining most of the day, I had left my flat and sat in Flint Owl, I felt crotchety, like I needed to shake out my feathers, arch my back, shout. So I started to type, without thinking. Just typing and typing, letting my mind unspool, unfurl, without judging or looking back. I typed on and off for 20 mins, pausing to draw breath. It felt good. Without pretence or form. A bit weird and rough. Today I tried again in a different mood. Just letting my fingers form what they were given. I’ll try again tomorrow. This isn’t proper writing. I am not sure what it is. But it feels a useful exercise. It’s very much inspired by Max Porter’s incredible book: Grief is the thing with feathers. But without the finesse. Anyway. Maybe I’ll finish those other blogs soon too….}

What is stopping me writing stopping the words flowing from me what is blocking me making me feel sick and strained and strange and stained what is stopping me from expressing outwards becoming bigger flying away leaving my feet travelling upwards what is stopping me screaming and shouting and heaving in lungfuls of air and wailing when I want to wail?

Why has all this time and space and freedom stifled me, pushing down on me like a solicitous blanket, killing me with kindness? Where has all my fire gone? Where has my drive, my fear, my itch, my dreams, my vibrant vertigo gone?

I don’t want to scratch at night but I do want to write again sense nonsense. I want to have the skeleton framework in which to hang my meat, my life, my trinkets and meaning and coloured bits of scarf and scruffy dreams. I want to work I WANT to learn I want to be able to be afraid and fuck up and that to be ok. I WANT to be appreciated for what I can do. I think I am quite good, but alone everyday left to my own devices who knows? Unpaid, unheeded, under-stimulated, same again, same again, same again. Who knows?

Pour it out, tip it down like the chemical glugging, stinking, retching poison to unblock the sink that will not unblock full of clogging, clagging shit of cake crumbs and coffee grounds that will not be dissolved, resolved, absolved. Not forgiven. Not even forgotten. Just left out in the rain until it warped and moulded and rusted and rotted away. And even then. STILL THERE. An eyesore just a block. Just a breeze. Just the solid stupid static feeling of the nothing. The passing of time without marks.

The lying in sweated sheets with the no-way-forward thoughts pressing out of your poor-slept sour skin. Nothing. Not a thing. Not a jot. Only rotting rhymes that will not.

Sieve out the lumps, stir it through until you blister. Bluster. Pester. Rub red raw. Random royal icing like snow. Heavy and curl-able. Not something that should actually be eaten. Something that should be looked at. Contemplated. Confiscated after the fact. Stuck. Strapped. Striped. Stripped. Whipped. Wanton. Deserved It. Deserved what she got. Served. Shot. Love all. STOP. Don’t stop.

Words which are stuck, spun, backwards. Not exactly what they means. Part of something else. Not funny haha. Most definitely peculiar. Not who they expected. Out of character. Ache. I am repeating myself? AM I? It wasn’t actually a question. This conversation is over. It wasn’t actually an argument. WE ARE NOT SHOUTING. Nail biting. Nails bitten. Nailed. Cross. NOT CROSS. Just having a discussion. None of your business. We can’t talk about it anymore. There is no point. Pointed. At you. Not. For want of a better word. For want of any word. MY KINGDOM FOR A WORD. Where has it gone? Pointed. On the tip of my tongue. Feeling. You. The tip of my tongue. Speaking. Tip top. Trap. Trop. Trop, trop triste. Mais ouí.

Fuck off.

Now.

Then.

Back and forth, it’s not like we haven’t been here already. We’re gone over this ground before, it’s not like this is NEW. River and stones and sudden floods and winter land. Scavenger. Scraped clean by the crows and rooks. Corvus taking all they want and there is not much to take. Beads. Bills. Beaks. Broken bones. Stoney stares. It was not there’s but they took it anyway. Didn’t they. DIDN’T THEY? It may not seem much but it was all we had. All we had and we we’re proud of it. Bare bones. No niceties in necessity.

Mother after all.

All.