Scene 1- Day- A particularly bright morning in may

The house is orderly chaos. The house is very small but very full. A wooden table sits in the middle of the room- open plan- the kitchen, sofa and TV can be seen. The wooden table is splattered with paint and strewn with fabrics, threads, safety pins, notebook and pens and a sketchbook.

The kitchen is very small, pans pile up on the old gas stove, and the sink is full of bubbles and cutlery. The surfaces are very clean and white- but not clear of clutter. Sofa cushion lie on the rug.

A huge disco ball hangs above the table, still lit and spinning from the night before. Burnt out candles sit on the shelf beside the table along with, a full ashtray and a huge green lamp, its bulb fallen and smashed on the floor.

The curtains are shut, but the sun peeps through the gaps.

A women, KJERSTI enters- she stumbles over a sofa cushion and sighs. She goes to the kitchen (of screen) and you can the loud, warming sound of the old red kettle. She directs her attention to two cats.

KJERSTI: Morning

A girl with short, messy red hair enters, pulling on a shoe and putting in an earring simultaneously and with difficulty.

MARTHA: Morning mum

KJERSTI: (continues to look at her cats) Well, I was talking to my cats

MARTHA: Of course

(She slumps into a chair silently, she is talkative, but not in the morning.)

(Two boys enter, one runs around through the room grabbing shoes, toast and holding a toothbrush still ready to spit. The second falls straight onto the sofa.)

BOY 2: (shouts hoarsely) Tea!

(Martha clears a place on the table and starts spinning a penny.)

MARTHA: Damn, I’m sorry about the mess, pretty bad I can’t lie.

KJERSTI: (rolls her eyes) You eating breakfast?

MARTHA: (sighs) Mum, you know I never eat breakfast.

BOY 1: (mouth full of toothpaste) that’s because you’re dumb.

(She flicks the penny at him)

KJERSTI: Ah I can’t handle you lot in the morning, sort out your mess please, I’ll see you later. 

(she exits)

KJERSTI: (off stage) And someone open the bloody curtains!

MARTHA: (to BOY 1) You heard her.

BOY 1: (spits into the sink) nah, fuck off.

BOY 2: (face down on the sofa gurgling into a pillow) Tea!

MARTHA: Tell you one thing you’re a TravisTea!

(She waits for them to laugh. They don’t)

(Silence while they judge her)

BOY 1: Really?

(He flicks toothpaste at her)

BOY 2: (still gurgling into a pillow) Tea..

(Martha stands, walks to the kitchen, garbs the cookie jar, takes two wanders over to the sofa, flicks boy 2 in the face and sticks her middle finger up at boy 1)

MARTHA: Byeeeee (sarcastically) have a nice day. 

I remember the way we were. The way we were together. I remember your eyes, they haunted me at night, and haunted me through the day. Once we went for a ride in the camper-van, we went down to the sea, that day when the rain came. We played ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’ all the way, because I was her, your little brown-eyed girl. I remember seeing you break down, getting lost I dazes I couldn’t break you out of. I remember the way you took me to that park every single Friday and you would sit on that bench, beneath that huge slide and cry.

People knew so much more than I. I thought you were lost forever, but they knew. They knew you weren’t okay, calling them up manically at 1a.m ranting about your little trip to beachy head. The medication destroyed what little sunshine you still had, but I didn’t understand. I was lost just as you were, wandering aimlessly trying to break out of that infinite daze. You had pulled me there along with soft acoustic vocals about love forever destroyed. It seemed that way to you.

You remember it differently. You thought everything you did was fine, neglect, laziness, exclusion. You saw no faults. Just as you saw no faults in anything you did or anything you do. You were the little fluffy bunny and you’d through all your toys out the pram if one thing didn’t go your way. You saw me as the one full of spite, not the one with your ring on her finger. I was spite itself in your mind, when I was the lonely lost girl without you to lean on. You thought blubbering was normal and to you it was my own maliciousness that demanded me a new name.

It was on the coldest stroke of midnight on that December, too cold for snow to fall. I lay in bed listening to the screaming through the wall. I heard her scream my name and shook, in sadness, in pain, in fear. My only comfort was far away and she wouldn’t answer my call. You stood blocking me on the landing. I refused to let my lips utter a word to you. When your guard was down I sprinted, out my door, down the stairs and into the night. I wore no shoes and my bare feet froze in air that bit like ants, but I could hardly notice, there was now, only one way out. I ran until the shrill scream like a fire alarm eventually died away.

It perhaps took me some years to move past. Everyday I tried and now I understand. I never quite will. Time heals all wounds they say, the problem is that means so much waiting. Waiting for the painful moments to pass is like living on Venus for the day. Your eyes followed me all through the day, but you’ve stopped chasing me through my dreams at night. I know I have your eyes, the deep brown eyes of you brown-eyed girl.

20/12/14          Please don’t leave me, please help me to see what I’ve

2:30am            done wrong, please come back, come home…

                                                                                                         Read

20/12/14          Help me to understand, please…help me

4:00am                                                                                            

                                                                                                         Read

20/12/14          Come home sweetheart, come back, I love you, I love

5:34am            you to pieces, I need you

                                                                                                         Read

20/12/14          Why won’t you answer me?

22:32pm  

                                                                                                         Read

20/12/14          Why are you shutting me out?

22:35pm

                                                                                                         Read

21/12/14          How do you think I’m supposed to feel, you never

12:41am          spare even a single thought for me, why am I

                        always the bad guy?

                                                                                                         Read

21/12/14         Take a look at yourself

12:44am

                                                                                                        Read

22/12/14         ANSWER ME

21:51pm

                                                                                                        Read

22/12/14          Come back

21:52pm

                                                                                                        Read

22/12/14          Come home

21:53pm

                                                                                                        Read

22/12/14          Please

21:54pm

                                                                                                        Read

23/12/14          Open the door, open it now, I know you’re in there, you

15:15pm          won’t answer but I know you’re inside.

                                                                                                        Read

23/12/14          I will not leave until you open this door

16:26pm

                                                                                                         Read

23/12/14          How long you wanna keep playing this one sweetie?

16:31pm

                                                                                                         Read

23/12/14          I know you’re there, you now I’m here COME OUT

16:33pm          NOW

                                                                                                        Read

24/12/14         I’m out. You were my one call; you’ll always be my one

17:16pm         call.

                                                                                                       Read

24/12/14         You selfish bitch, you will never think of anyone but

18:30pm         yourself, what about the kids what about me

                        you don’t even give a shit

                                                                                                        Read

24/12/14         Please I’m sorry, I love you, I will try, I will

22:51pm

                                                                                                        Read

24/12/14         Please

22:52pm                                                                                      

                                                                                                   Delivered

24/12/14        Please Beth

23:01pm

                                                                                                   Delivered

24/12/14        I can’t live without you

23:46pm

                                                                                                   Delivered

25/12/14        Happy Christmas Beth

12:05am 

                                                                                                          Sent

01/01/15        Happy New Year

12:01am

                                                                                                          Sent

14/02/15        Happy Valentines Day

2:22am

                                                                                                          Sent

16/06/15        Happy Birthday Beth

2:36am

                                                                                                          Sent

19/12/15        I love you, I always will

23:44am

                                                                                                         Sent

19/12/14        Every time you were angry, when you were sad I loved

23:55am         you. You’d always sigh when I was last out the house,

                       you’d cancel your plans when the kids wouldn’t let me

                       babysit. You put up with my snoring, my shouting and

                       my endless smoking, the way I picked at my fingers in

                       the corner of your eye. Sometimes you’d even laugh at

                       the jokes I told at least once a day. I know you see me in

                        our daughter, my eyes undeservingly placed on such a

                        beautiful face. Our son has my temper, I’m so sorry. But

                        he has your charm and your brain. They both have your

                        beautiful patience, and so much love to give. You never

                        gave up on me, even when I’m pretty sure you’d given

                        up yourself. I’m sorry I gave them nothing when you

                        gave them everything. I’m sorry I never understood. I’m

                        sorry Beth, you deserve so much more. You deserve the

                        world.                         

                                                                                                          Sent                                      

19/12/15        I love you. Every single day, every week and every year

23:58pm        that flies by I will love you.

                                                                                                          Sent

20/14/15        Goodbye Beth

12:01am

You stole it from her,

it lay by the sideboard,

on the shelf, did the box stir.

Inside were two sections,

red and white, white and red,

chips, scars, imperfections,.

They were not separate.

They are now.

Sixty four squares were shared,

now only sixteen each are spared.

A vast space now lies between,

It was your own hands that lost me,

I ran into the setting sun,

From then I have called myself free.

Long isolated, lost at sea,

never was I a much loved son,

it was your own hands that lost me.

My blindness gone, now I can see,

the one way out it was to run,

from then I have called myself free.

Your face, your eyes, the ones I flee,

the paranoia weighs a ton,

It was your own hands that lost me.

So rub me off the family tree,

in the end, this battle I won,

from then I have called myself free.

I venture farther, I do flee,

from crashing waves, those best to shun.

It was your own hands that lost me,

To write is to escape, to be free and to forget. It is to spill that chaos of emotion packed up in your head, perhaps to share a burden with the paper, when there are secrets you want to keep.

There is nothing I love more than reading by an open window, except perhaps writing by one. The paper doesn’t judge you. You can endlessly cross out, rewrite; it won’t care. Spill what you want to spill, revel in the fact no one, no one but you will ever read the scrawl.

I find I write quick, frantically, never slow. Thoughts race through my head and I write down every one. To hell with slow and steady, editing comes later.

Writing helps me relieve the inner madness that is my mind. The engulfment of thoughts, feelings. To describe something, to write something is to appreciate its beauty, the world has so much beauty paired with pain, to write about it, is to be part of it.

Writing is freedom, it is escapism. For a moment. just a moment I’m not an clueless teen scribbling in a notebook. For a moment I’m soaring high above myself, outside looking in. For a moment I am no one. I can see and I can hear the world move around me. And to put that into words… That’s a challenge I’ll never be sick of attempting.

Yeah, I can be shit, way too much, way too pretentious, hate everything I write, or sometimes love it. We have a love hate relationship. But in the end writing is like art, you will never, ever be finished.

The cold sky is a mystery of grey,

smoke curls out of a black stone chimney pot.

quickly the night is taking over day.

A sad flag waves in the chill breeze that blows,

in air that’s mostly still and silent,

what hangs down is it’s melancholy nose.

Raindrops form perfect circles on the grass,

the rolling hills are encompassed in mist;

the soil reveals all different kinds of glass,

old bones lay lazily beneath the stone,

pale figures rise up from the cold hard ground,

when wind blows through the hills desperately moan.

The dry grey stone before me bears your name,

It lies at the end of your bed,

a washed out, stained blanket,

no one wants it,

no one will have it.

But there it still lies,

frayed, tear and make-up stained,

full of lost thoughts,

thrown away feelings;

regrets.

The damp smell fills the air,

like constant, ceaseless rain,

food you turn over and over in your mouth,

until it’s one dull, flavourless chunk.

It carries an aftertaste,

bitterness spreading all over your tongue.

Cold, clammy, limp to the touch,

neither soft nor hard,

it melts under your fingertips, 

and sends shivers down your spine.

It visits mostly at night,

a nocturnal shadow,

a shadow that appears, even in darkness.

It will lie at your feet,

no matter how fast you run,

down it’ll weigh you,

down it’ll keep you.

A burden coloured off-white,