You are a small voice to me

You are a small voice to me. You are a small voice in a car to me. You see me one evening peddling incense candles and counterfeit DVDs through a pub on Malfort Road and you ask me what has happened since we last spoke and we last spoke ten years earlier and I think how do you measure these things and how do you measure change and you watch me thinking and you are silent and sort of calm looking though your mouth is making these little popping movements as though you are taking tiny drags of a cigarette or singing silently or blowing smoke rings or making kisses in a dark window and I think for a long time and you watch me thinking and I tell you that my dog has died and that I am a lot better with spicy food now.

There is an animal quite similar to a mouse though it is a little smaller and closer to the size of a large beetle and it makes a sound like a crisp packet being opened whenever it is threatened and ordinarily when it is relaxed it walks on two feet like a human and makes a sound like brown rice being sprinkled onto a wet surface. I couldn’t look at you if you were as big and bright and quiet as the sun. And the sun is the biggest and brightest and quietest thing there is.

You are a feeble crayon line to me. You are a face drawn on a brown wall in a feeble crayon line to me. You are so beautiful I feel like a monster when I am around you. You ask me what has happened since we last spoke and even the thought of speaking seems strange and blasphemous to me and if you ate sawdust for days and gave up drinking then your lips would go dry and crumbling as worn out rubber and that’s how my lips felt at the thought of speaking to you.

I can’t spread my arms wide enough to express all the love inside of me. It’s hard to know what it’s all for. There is an animal quite similar to a whale though it is covered in dense, woolly white hair and it lives its whole life stuck in the sand with most of its huge, round woolly body outside of the water and it lives for hundreds of years though no one understands how.

You are the smell of cardamom and wet matches to me. You are the smell of cardamom and wet matches on a stained glass to me. You walk ahead along Bellenden Road in your raincoat and your crockery heels and you are navigating by your mobile phone and your feet on the rainy concrete sound like teacups coming together or pound coins in a till or belt buckles opening and I could not shout loud enough to ask you what it means and I could not stop thinking of when we last spoke and I was not sure if we had ever spoke or if the sounds that we made when we spoke ever conferred anything other than clouds of spit and steam and the noises that cattle make when they are chewing on their gums and swallowing and looking emptily at one another.

There is an animal quite similar to a dog though it has skin that is grey and smooth and more like the skin of an elephant or a rhinoceros or an upholstered leather chair and it sleeps all its life and all its memories are dreams. You know it’s really like I am the surface of the world and you are seven billion people lying on their bellies and kissing and blowing raspberries on the ground.

You are the feel of soap to me. You are the feel of strange hair and soap to me. I’m not getting any better at waking up early or at looking people in the eyes and your eyes are two practise eyes made for looking into. You are sitting beside of me under Blackfriars Bridge and you are kicking your shoes into the river and earlier you had flung off your raincoat into the river and your raincoat had looked like a starving bird flapping into the river and there are red margins on your lips from drinking red wine and you are saying have you ever been so cold.

There is an animal quite similar to an eel though it is several hundred metres long and almost totally inflexible and swims in straight lines in the deep ocean and looks like a rusted steel girder streaming through the darkness. And I could learn to love myself if it weren’t that I was made of water. It should be a made a secret that we are made of squalid water.

You are folded paper to me. You are folded paper on a carpet to me. You say to me have you ever been so cold and I feel so cold that I could give my coldness life and it could walk around and think and speak and cohabit me and I think that if you feel that cold too then you could give your coldness life as well and that our coldnesses could leave our bodies and make a life for themselves together in the freezing river or outer atmosphere or under arctic tundra and you are shivering so furiously it looks as though you are dancing and I try to tell you these things and I can’t and all I can say is I have never been so cold.

I know that if I asked you would roll out a white towel as long as a beach for me and that you would crouch clapping your hands and crying as I walked along it. You are brushing your hair behind your ears and your hair is heavy and thin with the rain and stuck flat to your head in black lines and I am trying to be brave enough to reach out and touch you. There is an animal quite similar to a frog though it is rounder and greasier and looks like a green rubber ball rubbed in black butter.

You ask me have you ever been so cold and I reply that I have never been so cold but really I am thinking of a time when I was very small and very cold and looking through the glass of an animal enclosure at a gorilla that was so tall and it was standing there behind the glass and it was entirely still and it was looming and looking at me in the eyes and I could swear I could hear it thinking and its voice was like an elevator door being pried open or a chainsaw stuttering into soft soil or an electric drill or a car radiator throwing out water and it was repeating the same words over and over and looking at me and it was saying come over here and feel this majestic heart beating.