WRONG WAY GO BACK

Has anyone ever tried to get a screenwriting agent? All their websites say “no unsolicited submissions - referrals only” but I cut everyone out of my life so that I can go weeks at a time without anyone saying my name.

I walk in the wind and it makes me feel sixteen again. But not who I was at sixteen. Rather, a cool, wise version of me who’s taking it as it comes and wears sick clothes, and can quote Mina Loy and likes the taste of beer (all of which, in reality, didn’t occur until my early twenties).

Something clicked a few days ago. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been writing more and more, or because my boyfriend is on the other side of the world going on beach trips with Apple Martin and taking drop-in acting classes at NYU. And I walk around by myself. In the wind, at the bottom of the world, so focused on trying to romanticise what’s left of my life as some defence against acknowledging how fucking heartbreaking growing up is. I play songs from Pure Heroin and Honeymoon and pretend it’s 2015 again but it all means more this time.

And I wish I met him back then. I could’ve stopped him from dating that Young Conservative who cheated on him countless times, and he could’ve loved me like he does now—irrevocably and naturally—and I wouldn’t spend ten years trying to earn peoples’ love. And I’d love him straight away. I took my time, in truth. When I think about how he must’ve felt every time I dodged the question because I wasn’t ready, it fills me with anger. Anger directed at myself. How could I not see? I’m going to marry this man. I’d let you all disappear for this man.

“You look hot,” he says in our WhatsApp chat. I sent him a picture of my new hairstyle, along with some scripts I wrote today. Every second thought I have is ‘what time is it there?’

We keep trying to schedule calls but he’s so bad at maths that he can hardly fathom the time difference and we can only ever talk for twenty minutes at a time. His friends here invited me to a dinner party, which was sweet. They’re all actors. That whole introvert/extrovert thing? It should really be ‘are you a writer or an actor?’

He spurs this confidence and faith and trust in me, that… dear God… with every night that passes, and I feel more myself, I can’t help but reckon I’m meant to be both.

no wonder you’re always drowning

i’m done watching it dissolve and pop into nothing

my time! my fire! i was here!

and so were my pets!

it never snowed, why is it snowing in my memories?

it never ever snowed

most years the dam would dry up

and the crawfish would bake in the stiff mud

they were here

it’s a twenty minute walk to the nearest cafe so i have plenty of time to visit us in my head

where we have a house in each city

and we flit between them

whenever the drama takes us

i only wake up when i have to spell your name to the barista

God forbid i give them mine

you always insist we land in Newark

you’ve got some sick fetish for the Lincoln Tunnel

it’s cute—how i can taste your thoughts only beneath the crushing mass of the Hudson

but then the wax melts

they call your name and i look up

when this you see, remember me

i was born during an eclipse

something, something, spread over brown bread

something gone and dark

oxytocin analogues

i can’t speak to my mother in her mother tongue

a native language wiped out for what? britpop?

she’s deaf in both ears

and whenever i see her happy it makes me sad

i was born forgiving you

through pure muscle, i fight back against the seething in my cells

and the promise in my blood

i worry, in secret, that my houseplants are embarrassed to live in my room

i mix creatine with pinot noir

i am sadder

a triple libra, never balanced

a manic-depressive, never balanced

who speaks two languages, both foreign

a bisexual, whatever that’s worth

i suppose it was only a partial eclipse

and it would seem i was born half a son under half a sun

and so i write—well, i try to write

and i wonder, maybe… the reason nothing i write makes any sense is… because half of it’s missing

half of it’s always been missing

i’ll love you most of any other love you’ll feel

that’s a threat

my love ruins lives

but there’ll be one out there who’s strong enough

to withstand my extremes

steadfast against my delusions

and the open will reach the close

and i’ll give you a child

and raise him with you

and teach him all we know

show him the roads we didn’t take

give him rules he’ll want to break

read him the lunar baedeker

raise him fierce