Siblings

House is silent apart from the buzz of panel shows on the television and canned laughter. I creep downstairs. Doing my best to tip toe through the tension, that hangs like strings with bells on, tied to every supermarket-bought art print and worthless holiday souvenir. Today was Tesla's birthday, Bowie played him in that film where there are two Bales, if only. Sister is asleep, exhausted from all the fake tears and pseudo-hysteria, now still in her bed of foul language. As I showered, thoughts of what I would had said to her scuttled through my mind, but then became refined and thorny. I rehearsed the words as the scalding water washed over my shaggy head and salty brown back. I always take my showers under thermogenic waters, I like the itchy sensation the heat gives your skin and how it hurts when you breathe. I practised the words over and over, adding facial expression, hand motions. I'll never say them. They stay locked behind the shower curtain. My limbs are heavy.

I warmed up the leftover pasta and pesto from last night's attempt at dinner. I ate in the dark. The gentle clatter of teeth on metal being my only company. Plunge don't paddle, Penny used to say. I don't like to swim, not since two summers past. I went and got a pad and began an illegible scrawl across the page. A messy trail of thought, neatness is for the Autistic and the Japanese. Scathing look from father, he'd rather I play more contact sports. "Got to get out into the working world",

"Got To Stand On Your Own Two Feet"

Charles Mingus - Meditations
Coltrane Motion - The Year Without A Summer
Yes - Owner Of A Lonely Heart