Tattoo

It takes a knife, a needle and a lot of tears to realise no one gets you.

It’s like – mummy doesn’t understand the ink and the bones, and friends don’t know where you begin and where you end and best friends can’t quite grasp when you drifted sososo far away.

And it’s oh so scary to realise you could be wanting to die and no one would bat a eyelash- and everyone would be surprised that the oddball killed themself. I mean, I’m far away like never before and I can smile but not connect. But if I don’t know who I am, and they don’t know me anymore; all that’s left is the needs and wants.

I’m lost in a dream of grey and grey. I can’t remember a day of colour except maybe green eyes or blue skies – but mostly grey because that’s what I face in the mirror and that’s how the clouds work.

“Jazz?”

Reality tugs on my mind as the insistent voice of Kaitlin, reeling me in syllable by syllable till I’m seated in a wooden stool; staring at a chipped table. Art.

I pull a muscle wrenching smile to my face and send it her way; picking up my pencil once more and concentrating on outlining the sparkle in Brian Molko’s eye.

“You okay? You’re kind of day dreaming.” she attempted to smile and I attempted to understand why she even bothers anymore. It’ll be a bitter end – or maybe lost, drifting and drifting till it can’t be found. Till she sits down next to me one day and doesn’t know what to say; how to talk to a stranger.

“Yeah, yeah.” And upon her unconvinced face I added a few more words “Just, thinking; you know?”

She stared a second and frowned, black hair swooping over her eyes and hand hovering over the rough paper in front of her, a silence as she seemed to pause.

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

I looked away.