Unphotographable
I am an imperfect photographer. Imprecise and impractical. Unpractised and amateur. The frame that I form between my outstretched fingers is inconsistent, unevenly shaped, plain wrong. My astygmatic eyes frequently fail as a pin-sharp viewfinder. My nervous balance and lack of poise turn the focused to fuzzy.
I prefer a statue to a living and breathing entity, because the former is unable to shy away from my fumbled attempts at transforming it into art. Still life cannot decide to adjust its position in the same microsecond that the shutter whirs, clicks and mechanically blinks. Concrete and wood win out over flesh and bone, even though my unspoken desire would be to preserve a person in pixellated history.
In the darkroom of my dreams, shadowy profiles become powerful portraits that move the viewer to tears. In my imaginings, I am the silent yet authoritative presence obscured behind the glass of technology, who asks not for a smile daubed from cheek to cheek in the broadest brushstroke, but merely for an expression filled with truth.
So when that fleeting moment presented itself as almost too picture perfect - evenly framed, your face evocatively lit by the hazy sunlight of a spring evening, and with your skin pulsing with life and a tale told - I reached for the camera once more, in the distant hope of saving the scene for posterity. My hands carved the lens out of thin air, my eyes fine-tuned their focus and depth, my face edged closer to magnify the image, and my right index finger pressed the shutter release.
No whir, no click, no mechanical blink.
I am an imperfect photographer, but I surpassed my inexperience in the brief pause of a snapshot. I recorded a look that will last into beyond. I caught your gaze and sent it forth to live its life. Not on film. Not on paper. Not even on a screen. But here, only here. Where it belongs.
This isn’t a comedy quiz show, is it?
“Well, I - I - I - I, gosh, Mayor. I’m the mayor. The mayor of London. Like Dick Whittington. How absolutely. Yes. London. Great city. Cradle of - of - of - of - something great. Not sure what. But great, nonetheless. Modern democracy and, erm, civilisation. Or was that Rome? Italian restaurant. Yum, my favourite. Spaghetti carbonara. Yah. Ahem. Yes. Um. So I’ll be getting straight down to work in my office in - wherever my office is. City Hall. Building. Thing. Place. Lots of glass. Oh look, I can see my house from here. Jolly good. So, yes, sat in my chair at my desk in City Hall. Just as soon as I’ve found it. By the river, I think. River. Big watery thing, can’t miss it really. Marvellous.
“Right, and so we start with Round One, spot the odd one out. Oh wait, not a comedy quiz show. Real life. Leadership. Policies. Oh gulp, gosh and, um, you know. Stuff. What have you got yourself into, Boris? I don’t know, Boris. But it looks like hard work. Serious. With meetings round tables. No Henley garden party. No more cucumber sandwiches for Boris. No. Business breakfasts, power lunches and jellied eels from now on.
“My - my - first task, my overall mission, my guiding principle, my shining beacon, my light in the darkness, my zealous, um, zeal is. What is it? Oh yes. To return this great city - oh, I said that already, didn’t I? But it bears repeating. Always bears repeating. Which I do a lot. Repeat. Great city - to return this great city to what it once was. A great city. Unlike Liverpool, which is - is - is - full of Liverpudlians. And Beatles. And moptops. And beat music. And football hooligans. And drug addicts. Oh, not allowed to say that. Sorry, Mr Cameron. David. Dave. My mate, Dave. Erm, sorry. Sorry, Liverpool. Yes. Where was I? I’m not in Liverpool, that’s for certain. Perish the thought. So. Yes.
“Not that fair old London - God bless her Majesty and all who sail in her - isn’t still a great city and hasn’t been a great city under the leadership of Mr Livingstone, I presume, and his friendly newts. But it could be greater. And greater still. Like it was in the old days. Eng-er-land swings like a pendulum do, Bobbies on bicycles two by two, Westminster Abbey, the tower of Big Ben, the rosy red cheeks of the little children. Roger Miller, you know. Never a truer word spoken. Or sung. He was American, but he knew a thing or three. Or two.
“So. Absolutely. Definitely. Indubitably. More Bobbies on the beat, ready to clip those young scalliwags round the ear for being disrespectful to old ladies and politicians with moustaches. Or even old ladies with moustaches. Guns? Guns, you say? Youngsters carry guns? Or knives? Oh, I’m sure - sure - sure - yah, sure - that, ah, you know, that all these violent teenage hoodlums require is a firm, firm, firm talking-to by a clippie on the bus, or a community policeman, and they’ll see the error of their ways. If not, I shall make them sweep the streets and do good works for the community. Oh yes. Reintroduce the cheery conductor. That was in my manifesto, you know. Manifesto! Great word. Manifesto! I’ve got it here, somewhere. In a pocket. I think. Oh, oh, oh. Oh dear. That’s a receipt from the bar at my private club. Gosh, what a lot of champers. I might be able to claim that back on expenses. Nudge nudge, wink wink. As it were.
“Congestion? No, no, no, I - I - I - am really very healthy, and rarely get a cold. Jogging and cycling without a helmet, that does it for me. Head injury? I have no fear! No fear! But no congestion either. Sinus spray, you know, quick squirt up each nostril and, um, ah, Robert is indeed your uncle. Though he isn’t. But - but - but - Stanley is my father. Hello pater, your boy’s done jolly well. Sorry. Again. Losing the, um, plot. Plot. So congestion, yes. Oh. Congestion on the roads. I see. Yes. Yes, terribly terribly serious, that. Congestion. But charging for the right to drive on the open road and then park in a queue is wrong. No. Driving a huge great car is a symbol of our fine freedom to be, erm, fine and free. And, and, and. Something. Free. Yes. So I will not be extending the congestion charge zone because, you know, the - the - the - environment is lovely and dainty and green and sky already. Birds twitter. Nothing but blue skies from now on. Is that a song too?
“So this morning, Londoners and London and London people, I want you to breathe in. Breathe. Take a long breath. Smell that? That’s pure, clean London air, that is. Oh gosh. Cough cough splutter. And you can smell it as you sit in your traffic jam in your, um, four by four by four. Oh, too many fours. But, yes, four by fours are - are - are, well, yes, they’re the size of a small tank. But they are entirely necessary for negotiating the, um, inhospitable hills and dales, the mud and dirt tracks of Kensington. And Chelsea. Lots of farmers there. Country squires. And children called Jemima. Or Toby.
“Routemasters! Routemaster buses! Great British symbol. Red. Double decker. Brrrrroooom brrrrroooom! Chugga chugga chugga chugga! That’s the noise they make, you know. Standing at bus stops. When I was a mere stripling of a lad, school cap and knee-length shorts, climbing on the back of a jolly red Routemaster. Happy days. Wipe a tear, Boris dear, from your eye-eee. Oh yes. A great British, London, city noise. Splendid Routemaster double-decker buses. And so we shall reintroduce them to London’s streets paved with gold, instead of seeing those awful bendy buses, which are awfully bendy. Routemasters do not bend, you see. Which is a good thing. Because if you bend too much, you snap. Snap! Like a crocodile! Or a bread-stick! That’s the laws of physics for you. Yah. I have spoken to many, many, many people who said to me, ‘Boris!’ Because that’s my name. ‘Boris! Bring back Routemasters!’ And I said to these people - all of them fine, upstanding middle-aged gentlemen wearing cagouls, carrying packets of cheese sandwiches and - and - and with slightly whiffy, sorry but yes, slightly whiffy personal hygiene problems - that yes! Routemasters! Crawling along the congested roads. Brings a smile to a genuine God’s-honest Cockney’s face, I think you’ll find.
“And to poor disabled folks, old people and those generally wobbly, infirm sorts who cannot get on Routemasters I say, um, that we will run special buses for you, because you are such special people. Special and lovely but, well, you know, you simply don’t need to go out and go to places as much as the rest of us with busy lives. Because you can’t afford to, and because you don’t have a four by four by four by four. So the special bus will run ever so frequently in one direction every two weeks, then back the other way a fortnight later. And these special buses will allow you to hobble, wobble, wheel and limp on board in style and comfort while the rest of us get on with important things like being important. Gosh. These are my policies. Policies! Policy! I have one! There, that’s got the blighter.
“I have even drawn a design for a new Routemaster. Yes. Here. In crayon. In my notebook. I call it ‘Boris’s Secret Notebook’. Pops helped me with the picture - hello again, daddy - and I did the colouring in all by myself. I’ve estimated the cost of developing the shiny new bus as, um, money. Some money. Oh, lots of money, they tell me. Still, no price is too great. Or too small. But rather, somewhere in the middle. So it will cost roughly between £8 million and £90 million. We shall have to raid a few piggy banks, obviously. I shall announce the name of my new piggy bank manager tomorrow. First thing I do. And fine, decent, hard-working, thigh-slapping Londoners will not mind surrendering their piggy banks to me, in exchange for their city being great again. Greater. Greatest. Great.
“Do I think - do I think - do I think? No, not often. Not if I can help it. It’s all in here, under my hair. No, you see, I shall appoint people, advisors, knowledgeable knowledge, ah, experts to, erm, do all the thinking for me. I shall be the ideas man, the big cheese, le grand fromage. I shall lead on the big ideas like, ah, well, you know, I’m sure there’ll be some along the way. Big ideas, that is. Oh, I see! Do I think that people will desert London now that I’m mayor? Oh no. Not at all. They - they - they won’t be able to leave, as they’ll be stuck in even longer traffic jams and, um, coughing up their lungs. Hurrah. Hurrah for lungs and that, ah, breathing thing they do. Or the people won’t be able to leave because they will be trapped in a downward spiral of debt, thanks of the ever increasing cost of living in this fantastic city with its financial beating heart and its pie and mash shop intestines. You’ll be able to go if you’re wealthy, of course, and have a house on my street. But then you won’t need to. Yah. Wow. And indeed, bow wow wow. The free market economy makes me so proud.
“On to Round Two, then. First question. Oh. I keep forgetting. This isn’t a comedy quiz show, is it? Running London. Tommy Steele. Sid Vicious. Vera Lynn. The Blitz. Sound of bow bells. EastEnders. Ricky! Bianca! Oi, you, get it sorted! Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner that I love, um, where are we again? London. Oh yes. Fingers on buzzers, then.”
Sad, pathetic charity case
Ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce you to Stephen.
Stephen is a pitiful young man who is suffering. I’m sure you can tell that, just by looking at his photograph on the right. He is suffering from a terrible affliction, with which he is afflicted twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five physically and emotionally wounding days a year. Sometimes he is even afflicted twice a day at weekends. It’s quite, quite tragic.
I’m sure you’ve spotted Stephen’s awful, tragic and tragically awful affliction by now. That’s right. Stephen has blonde spiky hair, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the full horror of the peroxide bleached mid-1980s, when terrifying beasts such as Limahl from Kajagoogoo, Howard Jones and that bloke from A Flock of Seagulls stalked the Earth in rabid packs, preying on young and innocent Smash Hits readers. Stephen, who remains stoically courageous in the face of such an unfair lot in life, also wears a red tie as the single signature colour of an entirely black outfit, presumably because he thinks it makes him look sharp and stylish. It doesn’t.
Oh, and whilst I remember, Stephen is also a wheelchair user. He’s disabled. A disabled person. Which isn’t a tragic affliction at all, certainly not one on a par with a liking for tinny synthpop and toyshop drum machines circa 1983. But nonetheless, I thought I should mention his disability, just in case you were too dazzled by his coiffure and couture to have clocked it in the first place.
So. Yes. The wheelchair. It’s that chair thing with wheels that he’s sitting on. Not so sure about the yellow frame myself, but fortunately he’s once again successfully distracted us from such a lurid choice of shade by adopting a moody facial expression and holding a small globe in his right hand.
But why, you might well ask, is Stephen brandishing that replica of this fair planet before him? Let’s turn to the man himself for a far too detailed explanation:
“Planet Earth, right, is my playground, right? I don’t let my disability stand in my way, y’know? See the ability, not the disability. Got it? My wheels, right, are my legs, and I use my legs - in other words, my wheels - to explore the world. Comprendez?
“I am an adventurer, y’know? A crusader. I’m here to show, like, all disabled people that they don’t have to, like, sit on their arses all day eating biscuits, claiming benefits, and whinging about bloody inequality, right?
“There are no barriers except the barriers of the mind, see? Man, that’s deep. I got that off a meditation tape in Goa, when I was communing with the hippies.
“Anyway. So, like, what I’ve been doing, right, is breaking records. My business is record-breaking. And that’s got nothing to do with the fact that I can’t get a proper job because they boot me out the door as soon as they’ve seen my wheels. Oh no, absolutely not, mister. Do not, as they say, believe the hype, ‘cos I enjoyed working in the crisp factory after I got my degree in Communication Studies. Indeed I did.
“So I was the first wheelchair user to cross the Sahara single-handed, right? And, like, you won’t believe this, right? But just to make it more difficult for myself, I tied three cows to the back of my chair. They died of chronic dehydration and malnutrition on the way, of course, but I soldiered on like a - well, like a soldier, but in a wheelchair - and pulled their decaying carcasses to the other side. The pic I got in The News of the World, with the headline ‘Super Stevie Is Wheely Wonderful’ just made me cry buckets, you know? Though not like a baby, right? ‘Cos I’m hard as nails, got that?
“So after that little bit of fun and frolics, I decided that ‘despite my disability’, I would go white-water rafting - in my bloody wheelchair, right? - over the Niagara Falls. And I thought it would be a right laugh to take a hod of bricks with me too. Just to add to the drama, y’know? I think I was the first person to do that as well. Like, ever. Wonder why?
“That bold, brave and not at all stupidly dangerous stunt - no matter what my boring mates say - got me on the Oprah show in the US, on a special programme she did called Heartwarming Cripples are Humans Too. I mean, it was Oprah bleedin’ Winfrey, right? And she patted me on the head and told me I was inspiring. I said ‘Not the hair, Oprah. Not the hair’. And we laughed. Well, I laughed.
“So then I chose to become the very first wheelchair user in, like, the whole of history ever and ever and amen to fly a microlight plane across the Atlantic, with no food to sustain me during the journey ‘cept for two Snickers bars and three hundred and seventy-two Pro Plus tablets. Man, I was speedin’. I got in The Sun for that one, snapped with a bevy of page three babes. One of those saucy minxes, right, bent down and patted me on the head with her …”
I’m sorry. I had to stop Stephen there. Cut him off in his prime, you might say. I promise to apologise to him later about plastering a taut length of masking tape over his mouth. But it was either that solution, or placing him at the top of a very steep hill, letting his brakes off and giving him a push. Harsh but fair, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Stephen may ooze bravado from every pore, but the sad truth is that whilst he’s travelling the world on his many escapades - getting in the newspapers and probably causing a snivelling, moist-eyed Esther Rantzen to explode in a fit of warmth at seeing the plucky disabled man conquering every challenge he sets himself - all that our ‘have a go hero’ really wants to do is use public transport in London without it requiring almost military levels of planning. He would quite like to get into his local pub too, without having to experience the dreadful indignity of being lifted up the two steps at the entrance by a pair of moaning, grudgeful bar staff. If they can even be bothered, that is. And as he gets enjoyably bladdered, Stephen would then like to be able to empty his full to bursting bladder in that same down-at-heel drinking establishment. Regrettably, the graffiti-strewn conveniences and the malfunctioning condom vending machine are at the bottom of a narrow flight of stairs - so it’s exceptionally fortunate that while wheeling through the jungles of Ecuador to raise money for disabled kiddies, he learned the mystical art of superhuman continence from a friendly pygmy. It comes in very handy after seven pints of lager.
This Blogging Against Disablism Day, I’m looking for your help to get all the incredibly annoying disabled adventurers such as Stephen off our TV screens and out of our newspapers. For good. All it would take is truly accessible public buildings and a completely accessible public transport network, and Stephen would never again feel the desperate need to bungee jump over a waterfall, shuffle up a perilous mountain on his bottom, or wheel across the Arctic tundra wearing nothing but a t-shirt emblazoned with the phone number of his charity donation hotline.
“So my next challenge, right, is my biggest yet. It’s going to make people’s jaws drop. They’re going to say, like, that I’m crazy, yeah? Off my bleedin’ trolley, right? It can’t be done, they’ll say. Stephen, it can’t be done. But nothing’s beaten me yet, certainly not this bloody wheelchair. It’s in yellow, y’know, ‘cos it looks cool and young and hip and happenin’. But it hasn’t beaten me, and nor will the sodding London Underground. And that’s what I’m going to do, got it? The whole tube network, right. Amersham at one end, through to Upminster at the other. All the way through the central zone. True, I expect there’ll be, like, a few awkward staircases to go up and down, but how hard can it be, right? How hard can it be?”
Make him stop. For God’s sake, make him stop.
I is well red (sic)
I have been tagged. Needless to say, this is not because I am lying on a slab of granite in the industrial concrete surroundings of a freezing cold mortuary, with a piece of yellowing card attached to my big toe and a frowning pathologist leaning over my corpse to examine the contents of my stomach - thereby deducing that I ate toast and Marmite a few short hours before I was brutally beaten to death in a frenzied attack with a breezeblock. No, not that. Not that at all. This means that he accompanying picture is nothing more than a tasteless and probably highly offensive joke, for which I apologise unreservedly. Well, almost unreservedly.
So, yes, to elaborate further, I have been tagged by Jess, who maintains a rather splendid mental milkcrate, and whose silver bottle tops I have been avidly collecting for many years. One day, when I have enough of the said items, I shall exchange them for cash and send Jess a pony in the mail. The pony will be small and cute and eminently useful for the transportation of lightweight groceries from the supermarket. Or maybe I am harbouring too many lingering childhood memories of charity appeals on Blue Peter.
Now, as a rule, I don’t do memes, not least because the word itself is so exceptionally infuriating. The Germans have always had it so much easier. They get a word like - oh, I don’t know, let’s pluck a random one from the Wörterbüch - ‘Eigentumswohnungshaftpflichtversicherung’, and they pronounce every single letter and syllable in full. Without even pausing for breath. That’s Teutonic efficiency for you. Yes, it’s true that to say it out loud requires a hefty mouthful of saliva and a particularly agile tongue (stop it, you filthy-minded people), but at least it makes sense in linguistic terms. The word ‘meme’, however, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It’s pronounced ‘meem’, for heaven’s sake, which is just wrong in so many ways.
To digress still further - please stay awake at the back, because I’ll get to the point eventually - I have always been of the opinion that the word ‘meme’ should in fact be spoken far slower and more deliberately as ‘Me Me’. Not only is this interpretation reassuringly self-centred, but it also inevitably makes me think of pandas.
I’ve really lost you now, haven’t I? Let me elucidate even more tangentially.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are watching the evening news and, after depressing you with stories of death, disease and destruction, the presenter’s stern face breaks into a beatific smile:
“And finally - Me Me the panda has given birth to a bouncing baby, the first cub to be born in captivity since 2003. Me Me joins the roll call of famous pandas such as Ping Ping, Chi Chi, An An, Ling Ling and Chan Chan, all of whose parents simply couldn’t be bothered to do the decent thing and make the panda with two backs on weekday afternoons when there were no camera-wielding tourists around to catch them in flagrante delicto. Me Me’s mother is reported to be doing well, but has retired to a dark corner of Chez Panda to stuff her face with bamboo, drink gin, and swear violently at her husband for putting her through all that agony. She has also vowed never to indulge in panda sex ever again, thereby contributing to the almost certain extinction of these cute, heartwarming, fluffy-wuffy animals. Aw, bless.”
Pandas. Memes. It all makes sense, if you think about it. But before you finally lose the will to live, let’s return to the real meaning of the word ‘meme’. And this meme, in particular. The meme in question. The meme you assumed you would be reading about some eight long paragraphs back. Meme. Meme. Meme. You’re saying the word over and over in your head now, aren’t you? It’s going to haunt you in your dreams, I promise you.
The rules of this meme are as follows:
1. Take the nearest book and go to page 123.
2. Go to the fifth sentence of the page.
3. Copy down the next three sentences.
4. Tag five people to pick up the meme baton.
So I did as instructed, though with an added dramatic flourish. I closed my eyes, stretched out my right hand, and groped in the dark for a book. I found the remains of a mouldy sandwich instead. I tried again. Success. My fingers alighted upon a book. Opening the hefty tome at the previously specified one hundred and twenty third page, I scanned down to the fifth sentence and discovered the following:
Oh. Oh dear.
Yes, it seems that the ugly rumours about my synonym addiction, long peddled by disreputable blog commentators, are entirely true. The lofty and frequently ridiculous descriptions contained within the excessive verbiage on this site don’t simply appear out of thin air - I really do keep a thesaurus by my side at all times. (It’s a hardback Chambers edition - a vital fact that I’m sure all you thesaurus fans out there were desperate to know.)
Having completed this task to my satisfaction - if not yours - all that remains for me to do is tag five people to complete the same meme, in the knowledge that they will undoubtedly appear far more intelligent and literary-minded than me. This is difficult, since just about every online writer I know and respect has already flicked to page 123 in their chosen book. So I’m going to aim high. Pointlessly high. Step forward, 17th century London diarist Samuel Pepys; St Paul, author of that enduringly popular Christian blog, The Pauline Epistles; Pope Benedict XVI, even if he will be utterly predictable in grabbing the Bible as his nearest volume; Mr Stephen Fry, whom I’m quite sure must have the time to complete all such requests sent to him by non-entity bloggers; and last but most definitely not least, a Big Dog. Because dogs read books too.
That is all. We now return you to your regularly scheduled obfuscatory nonsense. Please do not adjust your brain.
Alphabetti spaghetti: C
Lately, I have found myself feeling surprisingly Carefree. I appreciate that this may come as a shock to many of you, especially those who continue to labour under the fond misapprehension that I forever carry the woes of the world, not to mention the argumentative angels and demons of my own pesky conscience, on my shoulders. But it’s true. Oh, the horror. I’m sure that the neighbours will talk, if they’re not already doing so.
Fear not, however, for I still remain reassuringly Careworn. I have, on occasion, been known to try smoothing out the creases of vexation on my brow and the lines of life criss-crossing my palms. Though it makes me look ten years younger, I feel uneasy clambering back into the past and trying to inhabit the memories of my twenty-six year old skin. Instead, I choose to let the sun, rain and wind do their worst. That way, at least I know that I’m heading in the right direction, even if there is a hill to get over first.
I have found myself, too, being exceptionally Careful. Mostly between certain hours of the day. Mostly behind closed doors. Mostly under strips of fluorescent lighting and chequerboards of ceiling tiles. Mostly with piles of paper to the left, used coffee cups to the right, and a screen flattening my face to the front. I bite my tongue, tread on eggshells, snd cross my fingers until the whistle blows for end of play. Politicking is not my game, and I never had the patience for chess.
Inside, behind other closed doors, the release comes from being as Careless as my heart allows. With words and ideas and hours and minutes. With eyes and ears and more besides. With every sense and no sense at all. Caution makes a delightful racket when it smashes onto the concrete paving stones, some five floors below.
Yes, I could free myself more. Still more and then some. I often wish it, in whisperings aimed at the night sky and the rooftops and the city’s pinpricked lights. But then I wouldn’t be myself if I wasn’t also entirely Contradictory, would I?
Incantation
I am the whisper the whisperer the shy of voice the pause that becomes a cadence I am the word between the words after the rise and before the fall I am the dead air that even in ownership of silence beats with a heart of possibility I am the emptiness in your lungs between in and out and in again (in and out and in and out and out out out) where I live in the space between there just there between breathing for dear life and gasping for the sheer fall and the whatever comes hereafter after all this is all or nothing of something divided by everything.
Inhalation. To inhale. To be inhaled.
Exhalation. To exhale. To be exhaled.
Expectation. To expect. To be expected.
Realisation. To realise. To be realised.
I am the stifled giggle the unwise side-swipe the passionate curse in the heat of the verse or the hilarity or such vulgarity or not maybe not maybe I have gone too far this time oh what the fucking hell might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb so yes the sudden vulgarity in the blaze of the moment and the next moment that I didn’t even didn’t ever see coming this or that moment but usually you must understand and you will and you do that I speak politely as I was well brought up to observe and adhere and obey and stay quiet at all times except.
I babble insensibly between your verbs and unleash fever into the side of your neck while acting the embarrassed vampire I pull your ear to my mouth and clutch at straws like phrases until I find the one that breaks the camel’s back and now right now right this frozen minute (stop all the clocks) I am the startled punctuation you find hiding behind cushions and brushed under carpets I am a broken record an unspooled reel a scratched disc a corrupted file so I jibber and I jabber and I crack and I fold and I splinter and I shatter and I shout and I scream and yet and yet I feel no need to speak no compulsion to communicate I don’t succumb to the common pursuit to co-exist in conversation.
Breathing. Is simple.
When you know how. And why.
I open the door. Step outside.
Lock myself in. Behind me.
Then bite my tongue.
