Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Rachel threw me out of sleep with a hard slap across the face. Instinctively, I pressed my head deep into the pillow and spat and swore. She grabbed me by the hair and pulled me up. "Rachel wait ah-! ah-! Shhhit -"

     There was an air-whipping whirl of slapping cracking pyjama-tearing pillow-shoving until her weight sent me backwards into the headboard, where I tried to stand up, hearing words in-between wheezes like don't I’m not here who said you're allowed and then a left-eye clip which she probably didn't mean sent white lightening lines over everything and I made a really loud noise like EAAAHHH and tumbled off the bed.

     It was a bad fall (Clare would've laughed out loud) and after it I wasn't right sure where I was, but then I saw faint traces of the curtains through one eye in the mirror and that was enough to lead me up and out onto the landing, Rachel's panting and sobbing behind me going away with the closing of the door.

     And then switching on the bulb to see red speckles on my hands, and watching, with some vague memory of being beautifully content, gooey blood rushing down the hair-clogged plughole, shallow strings left behind in rusty, beaten browns (gone-off tooth-paste Clare would have called it) and the tired buzz of a bluebottle, trapped in this room for too long, hitting the double glazing - hitting the doubleglazing... And it's like, give up fly, please, just give up...

     I left about a half-hour later with a tube of Germaline and the last four and a half ginger biscuits and a massive lump on the left side of my face like somebody'd blown up all my veins underneath. It was a cold morning with mist, drizzly rain and slurred street light. Crisp-packets scraping down pavements kept me company until I reached the one way sign at the end of our street, where a small car slithered along the main road with its wipers on full. The post office and the crappest mini-market on the planet (doesn't even sell tea cakes) looked at me with full-on weirdness through their silvered-down doors and blacked-out windows, steel mesh over the top just to rub it in. Behind me: terraced houses smudged in soft mist and silence, something about the aerials on each chimney making me feel sick.

     Hands freezing, I turned left and wandered down the road. Found a bus-shelter with nobody in it and a missing window, sat down on the plastic seat. Rain soaked into my pants. Across the road, a dark field hissed, tiny pin-pricks of light flickering between hazy lumps of trees.

     Clare would have pissed herself laughing. Can't take it, eh? Can't take it Martin, fuck's sake, you're a soft bastard you.

     I touched my eyebrow, burning and bulging out too much. Another car crawled by, driver hunched up over the wheel. Moths battered about on the roof of the shelter. In the badly-lit grime, somebody'd scrawled KISS MY ARSE.

     A person hurried inside; I recoiled from the shock of not spotting their approach and watched them sit down. Didn't even register who it was until she coughed and spoke.

     "I'm sorry, I was half-asleep," said Rachel, panting slightly. I felt my pulse thumping in my neck. She'd never come after me before, never shown an ounce of give a shit. "You're alright, aren't you?" she said.

     I didn't answer.

     I felt her not looking at me, but outside, across the field. Thought she'd start talking about something different, something totally irrelevant - remember the waterslide at Richard Dunns? Did you like that pasta last night? never the now, always the history - but she made an effort that caused her to snatch tufts of hair, and lean back, and open and close her eyes like she was letting all the crap and pointless trivia pass under the bridge, one chunk at a time.

     She said, "I want you to hit me." And even though I felt a rush of anger and shit-scared, I nodded and said, "Right."

     Rain prickled the knackered shelter. I got a bad itch, slipped my hand under my arse from the side she couldn't see, and itched and scratched like hell until I made it worse. I wished for another car to fizzle past, just to fill in some time. Droplets cried down the windows, inducing memories of boredom as a child... Looking out over flooded gardens thinking of school... Watching Action Force figures left outside slink into mud.

     "Do you want to go back?" she suggested.

     "No" I said.

     She twiddled curls of hair onto her knees. “I'll be alright, you know. I just - need you to talk to me."

     I stopped picking my nails and breathed a gentle snort.

     "What?" she said. "What's funny?"

     "Nothing, " I said, "Go back if you like, I just want to sit here."

     “Don't you want my company?"

     I looked at her through the eye she'd nearly taken out. She didn't have much hair left. Fluffy islands clustered around the front, one or two damp strands frizzing in funny directions, bald areas of skin towards the back making her head look somehow too large. Clare would have called her a moron. Jesus Martin, look at the state of her, she's fucking disgusting...

     I looked at her until she seemed to understand. Thought about sliding my hand across the freezing seat, just for reassurance.

     “Don’t rip any more out, okay?” I said.

     “I will.” she said.

     “Well don’t.”

     “I will,” she said and got up

     She slipped out of the shelter leaving finger trails through bits of condensation. The night took her completely, as if I’d only imagined her. The noise of a car faded in at precisely the wrong time, its bright beams glowing through shattered rain.

     I slid across to the vague warmth where she’d been sitting. Tried to imagine asking her what she wanted me to ask. Why should it matter why? I thought. Why must all be connected? Night to sun going down, sun to morning rising, ripping out hair to some blot long gone in the distance she can’t leave alone...

     I flopped my head down and squinted at the pavement. Every dark flag-crackled led into another, every growth of dank moss sponged amber-tinted more; even the taut bruising fading into shadow held hands with the rest.

     I looked up. The shelter seemed more empty.

     The door was wide-open when I wandered back. I wiped my shoes, took them off, shut the door properly and locked it on both the Yale and the key. The hall was messy and cold. An uptipped box against the radiator looked like a face.

     I found her in the kitchen, half over the floor, half over one of her mum's borrowed stools, scissor-marks etched into her head. The tiles were a mess of dropped pots and sticky hair, the scissors she'd used open-jawed beside her clean, bare foot.

     Crying inside, I crouched beside her, took her cheeks, spidered my fingers up to smudge the blood into her shallow wounds. I held her tightly, felt her bite into my shirt to muffle the no, the never meant.

     "It hurts," she hissed. "Not living here."

     "Shhhh, it's okay..."

     “I'm not with you Martin. Where am I? Where am I?"