Write to music

Write as the beat takes hold. Boldness. 

Drop lyrics falling flawless through limitless spontaneity. Forget prose, forget posing, determining what flows from music to lettered screen. Write script in the inbetween, between deciding what to type and what is written out for you. 

Sit, get lost in it. 

Let waves crash over gaze, and be in the minute. 

Leg finds the rhythm, head provides sequence sentences that pour contemplatively from gravity of finger falls. Allow it all. There is no prose. No rules, decisions to keep constrained within, begin with a tap and let it drive beyond what you notice happening. 

Closed eyes, touch typed, errors are only another bleak break in the road that travels on. 

There is no prose. No continuum.

Nothing written. Feel it tingle bringing with it energy waves of grace as you experiment with what could be. Enjoy the journey. Creativity comes from being one with the situation.

Beat changes, jumps up tempo. Emotions move from sexy slow to groove. Move. Remove any ego. You are not writing for anyone, only the rhythm, let it be your guiding angel. Chaos embraced and placed next to the person you used to be.

  Be free. 

Enormity in the swell of satisfaction as bass drives through the heart of your existence. Exist in this instance, write to music, use it, refuse anything that comes with thinking. 

For there is no prose. There is no proof of identity. There is no determining algorithm of how you should be. There is nothing but tracks backed by drums and symphony. Sleep in Poetry. 

 Eyes closed. 

Over and over in love for the overload. 

Keep going, ignore the known. Be slow. Dispose of prose.

And play everlasting in the afterglow

Toe

 Fuck you toe

Just let me live again 

Routine rhythm

Something

Anything 

Imposter

 The choice is overwhelming

Scanning over spines housing infinite universes, I cannot help but feel surplus 

Where could my world possibly fit in?

Doubt takes centre stage

90,000 words of work too many days spent crafting lore, for what? 

where would I be placed? How would I stand out?

The choice is overwhelming

Reading tales of failure more prevalent than success. 

Keep going keep writing I hear from glorified professionals. JK got turned down by every publisher she wrote to.... 

I retort. It's not that easy. Not that assured. Most manuscripts are scrapped before they're adored. 

So why even try?

The choice is overwhelming. 

Sit down, earphones in. 

Carry on

Keep writing. 

Keep writing

Keep writing 

Night

 

    “Chris . . . . Chris?” I know the voice, the person it comes from, I know not the way it is spoken. A woeful silence hangs down the phone line as I ask my question; “Marie, Marie, what is it what’s wrong?” A knot tightens in my chest and the playful excitement of a few seconds before flees from my conscious. “Marie talk to me, what’s happening are you ok?” 

    “ . . . . What . . . What are you doing?” Her voice quivers with confusion and horror.   The tone in her voice and the question aimed not at me but at some unknown entity hits the alarm button in my body and suddenly I’m scared, and then I hear it. Behind her voice comes a sound of carnage, the crashing of a forced entry and the deep wrenching roar of mechanical destruction. 

    “MARIE?!”  Exasperation explodes from my mouth. 

    “. . Chris??! . . . . . …. ”

The terror in her questioning voice shreds its way down the phone line and stings my ear with a desperate impact. 

“. . . . No . . . STOP! . . .  CHRIS!!”

The first words a command the second a plea. I cant believe what I am hearing. Is this real? My wife. Her terror only draws a thicker darkness over my thoughts and my imagination burns horrifying images onto my minds eye. The sounds, writhing their sickening way towards me, yank my stomach up to my throat and my lungs suffocate my heart. Crashing, crunching, broken ornaments, grinding and banging and the doeful cries of unyeilding lament pour through the phones speaker.  

    “MARIE HOLD ON, I’LL BE THERE, HOLD ON MARIE I’M COMING” I’m torn, in two minds, the instinctive thought to hang up the receiver and get over there as fast as I can burns bright but dies. Instead my despairing curiosity sticks the phone to my ear. Shock and panic roots me to the spot. I think, I hope, I pray.  I hear another timid sound from down the phone line. 

    “No. .” The tearful plea almost inaudible but loud enough to work its way to me. With this, a word never spoken in such form by the other part of my heart, crushes me worst of all. A plea to an attacker. A plea for her life. And then it happens . . . 

    ”aaaAaAAAAAAGHhhhhhh . .CRAACCCCCCSHRUUUKUUUNNK” A loud thud and deafening crunch, the sound of impacting metal and broken bones and torn flesh rings down the receiver in a duet with the horrible cry. The high pitch shrieking sound shocks me like a jolt of lightening burning 10,000 volts of desperation and fear through my torso. Oh god, Marie, whats happening to you, whats happening, no baby, please, please be ok baby

    “I’m  comin, Marie, FUCK, oh god” Panic has its bloody claws around my heart tearing at the flesh like fingernails on a chalkboard. Shit, Marie, please be ok please, oh god I’m about to hang the phone up when a voice I hoped not to hear perforates the silence . . . . 

     “Daddy?” 

    “Charlie?” “Oh god Charlie no, please no. .” A picture of his confused unrefined soft and innocent face flashes before my eyes.  “Charlie listen to me, Run, get out, get away RUN CHARLIE YOU HEAR ME, RUN!” My desperate cries seem to fall on deaf helpless ears as the word comes once again . . .

    “Daddy” His tears run through his vocal chords like the gargle of a slit throat. 

    “CHARLIE RUN . . RUUN!!!” His soft voice breaks through the dam of my resilient heart and the dread and despair drags my thoughts down and with it my fight- and my fears and my fury rise and shudder through me exploding tears out my eyes and profanity out of my mouth

    “FUCKING RUN CHARLIE, GET OUT!” . . . . .

 The silence returns, the other end of the line dead, still off the hook, but silent to the situation. Till one final sound seeps out and tears my heart soul and my world in two. 

    “Daaa. . . uh . h h” His little voice choked off, withdrawn, the sound cupped in wrathful hands and blanked out of existence. His life and my hope suffocated. The phone drops from my hand, the line still active. My memory blanks, my vision blurs, my heart yearns, my soul dies, my world cries for me, the future laughs at me. Daley tries to comfort me. His apartment becomes my wrecking ball. Desperation, anger and despair all help to litter the surroundings with my turmoil.  My world crushed in 1 minute, in one phone call, my bloody raged fists grab the keys, we get in the car and with the last remaining withering hopes, high tail it to my house in fear, in fury, in malevolence and despair. 

Slowly, quietly at first but rising to a great crescendo, a sickening sound pierces the hanging phones’ silence and follows us as we exit. The laugh of a hyena as it’s enjoying its prey. . .  

    “heheh hehe. . . hehahahehah .. . hahehhehheHE HA . . . HAAHHAHAHHAHHEEHAHHAHHEHA”

Choose life

 What do people do in moments of absolute uncertainty? 

The times when you have no idea what you want; to go for a walk, eat a burger, hang out with friends or watch another episode? Does it render everyone else immobile? Stuck between what could be and what is, analysing through what was to predict expected reaction to choice. Being utterly uncomfortable as Netflix gives a five second window of no noise. Listening to the belly as it gurgles indecision. Watching grey clouds roll around teasing precipitation. 

What do people do in absolute consternation?

 The house is no longer habitable, bed no longer comfortable, phone no longer distracting, Xbox only exhausting. Talking, you gotta be kidding. Meeting, greeting, smiling and participating, I don't have the energy for that! Brain slowly rescinding. Just sit, and stare. Moving images mouth dialect, as self criticising sinks body further into sofa stupor, prophetising about expected outcome, Fuck it. Can't decide. Do nothing.

 What do people do in the midst of delirium? 

Run

Sandals

4pm day nearly done

Fucking little arseholes shouting 

screaming throwing sandals 

fighting with feet and pointed fingers

Wallah

Break it up 

Muhammad here NOW

Amad OUT GO

wallah habibe

Why are you fighting?

no response

bell sounds

other students leave

no time to set homework

Why, are you fighting?

silence

sideways glance 

irritation starting to perforate

fury

"Wallah teacher why you keep me here? Mushkala teacher!"

Eyes lock into spitting rage

lean in flex shoulders

Why are YOU fighting? 

I know he is a good student

Tsssk 

Kiss of lips and click of toungue

looks away then at the floor

silence

few minutes more

"My father"

mutters chin on chest

I touch his shoulder

shrugs, shakes

grimaces

I hold firm

looks up

our eyes meet

quietly I reply

"I understand"

anger irritates defiance

hold firm

clamp enough for control

not to scold

slowly pained lines retreat 

and sorrow washes over

He looks down one last time

"I understand"

Grip lessens on shoulder

release

lower head to his level

bend knees 

eyes clean

"You, are not, your father, Muhammad"

....

..

.

"You are NOT your father"

...

..

.

nods

Sniffs

Shuffles feet

Speaks

"hamdallah"

Morning

 The subtlety with which she slipped out of bed

with the sheet covering just enough

to leave plenty for the imagination

broke my slumber.

Through sleepy eyes I loved, lost, argued and made up with her.

Dreams filling in the blanks that conscious reality missed. 

These necessary to keep heart strings baited and entwined with hers.

For if an inch of pride or insincerity were to remove any one of these instances,

my love for her would drift into the unknown,

evaporating like tears on the sidewalk.

Troughs for the lost

 As he slept, fat head on chest, torso contained in the diners booth, his body seemed to contract, to subside.

The once bulbous, gluttonous, boil of a stomach had calmed, retracted, rested easy back to a cute marshmallow like cushion, free from the toxins thrown into it during the last 2 hours. His puffy, exhausted and inflated face followed the same, and calmed to a natural naked colour. Gentle lightening and softening of the blood red glowing extremities brought humanity back to his complexion. Angered stretched cheeks slowly paled and withdrew, retreating from suffocating his eyes like a deflating airbag on a steering wheel. The change was remarkable, super size to quaint in just a few minutes, his body now showing the slender man inside the once inflated sumo suit of his skin. 

My eyes could not pass from it, could not turn to another thing. The sight, grotesquely captivating. Here, a morbidly obese man who I had seen throwing back all there was to eat at the buffet table, that had countless plates of food stacked high, and all devoured with such fluidity, a constant unstoppable waste churner in rhythmic perfection without once glancing up or pausing for thought, was now merely a man once more.

Hope is a waking dream

The place was a far cry from the teak lined doorways and leather studded queen furniture sets of the Robin Hood pub on the corner of my old street.  My feet had dragged me here, not my head to the dark forest, a bar on the edge of town. How I got here I would never know.  Riding the monotonous waves of an unscrupulous melancholy I had left Virgil’s bleak bungalow without thought or consciousness and this is where the tide had taken me. 'I don’t know this area, I don’t know this place. I know that whiskey though.'  I ordered a double on the rocks and placed myself on one of the scatty looking dark green leather bar stools.  Colour faded from my vision and my thoughts rang through me as a murmured lament. 

‘My boy, my sweet Charlie.' The tiger in my blood reeled and repressed itself in the dark corners of my heart. The tide of my tears gently lapped against my memories as the scotch slid down my throat.  My eyes welcomed the saltiness that swelled and shone from my face. They filled and they fell, a slow soundless drip, mere pennies in the bank of my blackened soul. One tear for each memory. One tear for all the things my boy will never know.  His face smiled in my memory, swollen, blue lipped, eyes pert but rolled away. 

The whiskey warmed my throat and belly but not my thoughts. Through one glass I clawed, at possibilities, at alternative endings at desperation. Through one glass I suffered, through one I angered, through one I denied and through one I submitted.  Until my heart and head could take no more and my eyes cast out from myself and into my surroundings. The place was darker than I first noticed. A few subdued lanterns placed in the corners of the room, some tealights on the round oak tables and a few nestled behind dusty bottles on mirrored shelves behind the bar. Oppressive moody colours of the room added to the darkness and provided a dank atmosphere for customers to wade through. Old men, all of them, littered around the room, staring into a glass of liquid melancholy resting on ice in front of them, each man lost in his memories, each man, it seemed, vacant to the present, taunted by their past and chained to its misery. In their glasses they longed, they searched. For what? I couldn’t tell, each man as solemn as the next, worshipping a deity that evaded them. One man forlornly carved words into the table in front of him with a small pocket knife, the letters large, capital and deep in indentation. ‘HOPE IS A WAKING DREAM’. My eyes hovered on this for a while letting the words drift over me before the rest of the room presented itself. Men, one table for each, one glass for each save for the dusty ruggedly dressed white haired woman propped at the bar three stools down from me nursing two half full whiskey tumblers. In the corner, a worn dark brown leather sofa, tattered and cracked, sat next to the entrance 3 steps from the door and two from the bar. The indentations in it suggested use of prolonged periods of time. Next to it stood a peculiar looking coat stand, metal and tall with only a few hooks on the top. There were no coats on it. As I took in my surroundings, a muffled effigy of myself, my lolling eyes opened wide and the door to the bar did also. 

The lacerations from torment could be seen in his eyes and were mirrored on his face.  In a raise of a hand and a signal to the barman the new entrant to the pub dropped his torso onto the sofa and ungloved his left hand. The hand was blackened and punctured. Though his hand was not what caught my surprise. 

“His mouth was sown shut to keep the dishonest words from perforating others innocence.” The bedraggled old hag at the end of the bar let the words out in an emotionless sigh. The whiskey in front of her was the initial target but the comment aimed at me.  I turned my head to look at her as the words settled back to silence, and I gasped, a swift intake of breath. She had no eyes. Just hollows where the pearly white of the sclera should shine. I looked back down at my whisky quickly. Knowing to stare is rude, but more so because the hairs on the back of my neck had stiffened into attention and suddenly the bar did not feel so quiet, the drum of my heart filling the silence. Not wanting to look again at the hideous hollow of her features,  my eyes instead darted back to the wretched figure that had walked through the door. The old hag was right, his mouth was sown tight. Like a pair of shoelaces drawn with strength to snugly house the foot, the brown elasticated string crusted through puncture holes on each lip and zig zagged across the mouth like a leather boot. The lips had grown hard and callous with the mutation, stuck together by the cement of putrid saliva. His jaw still moved restlessly behind the tightly drawn covering, god knows what his teeth and mouth would be like without air or hygienic cleansing. My shock at the beldam's words, at a sound being made in the solemn bar was exasperated with some of my own 

“What.. by.. who?” My choice question was not thought through and poured out of me clumsily. I didn’t want to know, I should have kept quiet, offered the crone a nod of recognition, finished my whiskey, taken the hand of my misery and left quietly. Curiosity however is an emotion purely felt in the present, for the present, and because of that can creep out of a person unknowingly.  My eyes rested on the poor sown up soul intravenously injecting the alcohol he had just bought for a battery and two pieces of silver cutlery. The back of his hand showed the track marks of the Jackshots of past. Blackened veins protruded from the holes.  As he picked up the Jackbag and lifted it to the coat stand peg above his head his eyes rolled round in satisfaction. I couldn’t pull myself away from the sight. I had heard of these intravenous alcoholics but never believed I would lay my eyes on them. His desperate state made it all the eerier. A woeful retreat from the present in the worshipping of a habit. The old crone spoke, barely audible. 

“Hateful to me as are the gates of hell, is he who, hiding one thing in his heart, utters another.” Her face suddenly raged with character, the forlorn furrows on her forehead angled sharply downward and encouraged the malice to explode out of her face.  

“TRAITORS, LIARS TO THEIR LORD” The hag, in a flash, whipped up her glass turned and hurled it at the now unconscious sown soul. 

“WORDS EMPTY AS THE WIND ARE BETTER LEFT UNSAID!!” As swiftly as she had erupted she subsided, head drawn towards the counter once more. Her angered state a mere memory as her face regained its broken composure. Not a movement, not a stir, not a word more did she speak, like a gargoyle blessed with nocturnal life returning to its statuesque pose as the sun rises. I turned to see if any of the other burdened men in the bar had noticed the commotion or at least had a reaction to the insanity of it all, but none had moved, not even flinched. All still sucked in and shackled to their thousand yard stare at the glass in front of them.  A chill worked and needed its way down my spine, plucking at every hair on the way down. The glass had struck the sown man in the face, in the mouth, blood trickling as a gentle waterfall onto his chest was the only evidence that any such event had occurred. He remained unconscious, limitless in the dreams provided by the alcohol. The shock I felt from the situation drained from me into my whiskey removing the melancholy that usually took center stage, my heart hammered harder, fingers flushed white at a reactive grip on the glass and I stared down into its contents once again. ‘What the fuck!?’ I mouthed to the glass, careful not to make a sound so as to disturb the old blind crone’s statue. Sweat began to perforate my skin and grow in small droplets around my hairline and I squeezed my eyes closed. Still I remained for what seemed like an eternity, blinded, mute, deafened by the silence. Charlie, my boy, drifted through my solace. I wrenched open my eyes. The barman came out from the back and stood in front of me. 

“You alright?” Came a muttered query from behind the bar. I dared not look at him, nor any other soul in this strange place. Instead, head down I muttered back.

“Yeah, I’m fine” The words were not a part of me, they were an auto-response answering machine, ones that I had learnt over the years could placate any curiosity of misery and I knew it would do me no good to show weakness in a world of opportunists. I stared into my glass. To the barman my response sufficed and he went about his work. Loosening my grip, I downed the whiskey, one glass for the shock, placed it back on the bar and turned to leave. But as I swung round, movement from the end of the bar jolted my stomach and I froze. Staring back at me through hollowed eyes was the white haired hag, expression turned cold, anger scarring her cheeks to her forehead and in her shaking fist she held high the daggered shards of a broken whiskey tumbler.

Goals

 Untitled. 

Fuck you

 Are you done.

Are you

Quite 

Done? 

Sick of this shit 

Walking should not be so difficult

Talking should not be so 

Presence should not be a chore

All of it

Conducted benevolent

Under life's cruel malice

Stop me before I stop myself

Push through it

Create a path 

Tread that thread only

 animals have carved

Get stronger 

Get stronger 

Get STRONGER

Arthur

 It started with a throb, deep in the joints of the big toe. Pulsing fury condensed under skin pushing bones apart. Ice, ibuprofen put the foot up. Bringing it down again sends rifles up to the knee. Left side, left behind with each labouring step. Stop, it shouts, stop moving so I can devour. Motion stops, complying with grating levers. More ibuprofen, strained smiles as child runs between legs. I'm sorry I say to sweet pained face, I cant. Can't stand up again. Play with mummy instead.

glimmer

                                                                         Isn’t it strange

This eternal war we confide in

Subtle shades of indignant glory

Persist

Our hearts discontent

Left in the dark

Without a prison to hold it

Just a bottle

A smoke

And the dying fire light

Teacher

SIT DOWN! 

booms like a cannon in these four walls

led ricocheting off the desks 

and through the chests

of students sat startled

Of those left standing

lead blasts through their knees 

and backsides catch them as they fall

And finally the room becomes 

Silent 

still

control regained again

in these four walls.

For now....

New

 Scarred hands cradle life 

Dopamine

 Why try when distractions allow a slow release. Minute fluctuations that define what time should be spent on. Why bother engaging the brain when a reel of gags, fails or strange crafts captivates the attention so well. why bother to push yourself. 

Addiction rears its ugly head in many ways, each have the same end. Death. It is not always the body that dies, but always a part of self. 

Put down the phone, erase the videos that allow 'freedom' for five seconds. Engage. Use your brain. Create new links in neurons. 

Maybe, this is the issue with current consensus in this world. To be conscious is deemed enough. No real need to actively produce, stuff. 

Just pick up phone, swipe left, right, press play. 

Tap 20 words, post. selfie, glam up. React, thumbs up. tik tok tick tock tick tock. 

days drain away without having to so much as strain to be creative. 

Engage. Use your brain.

Put down the device, open eyes.

Play.

.....

 Pint.

.....

The flies

 The flies started coming after a few days. 2, milling around scratching their legs, placid, hanging around on the kitchen cupboard. No-one took any notice, after all it was summer and likely the drone of a busy insect following them around the house felt almost nostalgic. Plus it seemed such small inconveniences were trivial in the midst of what they called a 'hit'. 

It was day four where the flies presence really became apparent. 5 more of them, much like the first 2, docile, a scuttle here and there but no flight, instead just stagnant, watching. Always watching. 

Day ten they took over the cupboards, 31 of them, all heads pointing down. Black pecan bodies immobile, save for a few kicks, each maneuvering, positioning themselves to get the best view of the floor. Leftover Food lay un-spoilt on the sides, dirty dishes overflowing the sink, but not one fly descended on them. Such measly scraps did not command their attention. In greasy food, larvae would not attach themselves, would be dissolved slowly by spices not made for flies. Flesh was best. Slowly decomposing flesh.

 No-one had come in the kitchen for a while, the door remaining firmly shut. Despite my cries before the flies, none of the inhabitants visited. Barely even a scream as it was opened halfway, then swiftly locked on day twelve, just a muttering amid rolling half open eyes.  

"All good dogs go to heaven........probably".

Slam.

. 

The show

 Lights down, set the kit. 

Hihat pedal gently close, open, close

Grip the sticks, tightly

loosen Fingertips

palm wood, turn wrists 

Bass drum pedal, test the spring

Beater kisses skin, retract again

Remember

4/4 cymbals first, roll, crescendo slight fill

Then drop into rhythm 

Breathe 

Close eyes roll head

This it

Fire builds

small hairs tingle

All the way down the spine

Get ready

Murmured excitement 

shadowed faces

Ripples through the darkness

Lights

Screams

Energy

Let's ave it

35mm

 Here's to all of youse from Cineworld 20something. We made a movie. Smiles and ideas, stoppin to argue, books and bare cleaning. Standees. Fuckem. Shift starts, do this do that. Halfway laughs.  Screen golf, popcorn throne, tannoy fuckin stoned, caz and her cats, freezer prank. locked. Jokes, bare fuckin jokes. Tell me a story about the job you wish you'd had. An I'll tell u about the 35mm.

Newton

 The first pint sinks down

Gliding past tastes and memories 

The ship, first port of call for every holiday

Smells of  sailors battered catch 

Waft between clunks of pumps 

from own brewed ale

Salty sea air whispers possibilities 

as bums hit bench and we gaze out to serenity

Kick off flip flops and curl toes around Sand mounds

The Castle in the distance calls to us

fern topped dunes and hiding shacks

Golf and Grey's inn over the horizon

warmth growing within 

knowing home again

Relax

Close eyes

Breathe

It

In

Unicorns

 Bustle hustle

Screams

 upstairs hiding 

Bundles 

bum jokes

Drawing dreams 

Burnt toast

Kippers fresh caught

Smoking on the Barbie

Long walks down white sands

drawbridges giant castles

Back home 

Flying dinner

Bathtime books and bubbles

Night night 

Little one

Sleep well

Tomorrow 

we ride unicorns

Momentum

 We are all connected

living 

separately 

together. 

The best moments in life 

are those with which  

We'll never receive thanks for. 

Are those 

That give others a second

To breathe

And in those moments  

Angels float with us

And the world in hiding 

is seen.

Regrets

     "I wish I had let myself be happier" . Charles watched as clouds drifted over pristine gardens below and shadows danced between the rosebeds. 

Julie huffed and adjusted the weaved blanket that rested on his useless legs. 

    "Whatever do you mean?" She chirped. "You've had a wonderful, long life Charles" she tucked the corners into the sides of the wheel chair and patted the material down, straightening out any creases. Charles sighed deeply but didn't look up to acknowledge his carer busily working around him. 

    "I wish I had let myself be happier". He repeated. " It was never my dream to be as I am." His fingers on his right hand curled and began clenching and unclenching fists that shook frail wrists. Julie bent down and picked up a pen that had fallen from the chair, turned and put it back on Charles's small writing desk. Must post that, she reminded herself, seeing his will addressed and stamped sitting alone in the middle of the wooden surface. 

    "What was that Charles?" She said turning back to fit him with a bib. Charles did not respond, just sighed a long exhale. After a while of her pottering he spoke again. 

    "There comes a time when you are no longer yourself, no longer your own personality. You are shadows of something that others expect, doomed to forever dance delighted with their depictions of you." He clenched his fist again, shaking this time reaching his shoulder. Julie busied behind him folding fresh towels and placing them in his tiny onsuite.

    "That's interesting Charles" she hummed from across the room. Her tone had dropped to a drone. It usually did after a while, Charles had heard that retort a thousand times. He grimaced, a film of water growing to glisten his tired eyes. Still he stared out the window. To her it must seem like an old fool looking out to the strange new world below. To him however it was not outdoors he was searching, but within, bygone, floating through the mists of a life lived but not lived. 

    "I wish I had let myself be happier" He said, this time with more vigor, a deep pained loss powering the words rising up from his chest. 

    "I am everything to all people. I wish I had explored it all, instead of cowering fearfully before judgement. I wish I had acted obstinately, outrageously, impulsively. Not Shackled by others depictions of responsibility for me, or grounded by those that don't understand how to step away from the system, from society, to get lost in the mist and say fuck you to the machine. I wish I had allowed myself to dream, instead of ticking the boxes I am expected to complete."

    "I wish I had let myself be happier." He whispered, tears dripping silently down onto his weaved uncreased swaddle. 

    "Bohemian. Instead of worrying constantly about how I may be perceived. About work, love, sex, spirituality." His head dropped and eyes creased closed, furrowed lines on his forehead pressed down into his despaired depression and he let out a slight sob.

    "I wish I had let myself be happier."  He whispered to himself. 

A few minutes past, he opened his eyes, lifted and turned his head slightly to look at Julie. She, had continued on, turning pillows, straightening sheet edges, picking up small lint that messed the carpets hundreds had walked on before him. She'd organized his final words to the world, and conversed for what was deemed enough, as was expected of her, and now finished all her chores she looked at her phone and grinned.

He sighed. Closed his eyes. She would not recognize herself either. Shaking his head, he breathed a final, deep, breath. And to her, for her, he plead.  

    "I wish I had chosen to be free."