when the pawn...

the movements to me seemed unnatural, accustomed as i am to jumping and only ever in one direction-
the sheer scope was for a while overwhelming;
that something can so quickly go so far.
there was something pleasing, though, in the ritual of it,
the naming and the dance,
and i can see how people while away hours just staring at the possibilities.

i've never missed someone quite so keenly,
or felt so utterly pointless when alone.

for a while last night i tried to be sociable,
seeing that i've been failing quite miserably of late
to put up with more than an hour or two in group company;
strange to sidle in to an unknown collective, their own habits and histories
winding around them almost visibly with the smoke
and not knowing what will please
or at least connect.
i excused myself from the party before they left, all scarved up,
the balloons that had been passed round now scattered on the floor.
nitrous oxide makes me feel seventeen again,
although it always seemed too frivolous a pastime
when i was actually in my teens
(they call it the hippie heroin, and i was vehemently
not a hippie, despite all the prog rock and the flares
and the weed. for the first few days of university,
when we were all acclimatising to the new walls,
the new faces,
i was alive with the possibility of finally
Making a Statement.
i hung around with two goths for two days,
but even by the end of the first,
when i found myself sitting on the floor and listening to talk of tarot cards
and how rock and hip hop should really be tried together!,
i was disgusted by pigeon holes).

i've been living in my new flat for three weeks now,
its boards and floors growing more familiar each day. on my windowsill,
tulips leap from a glass and seem to curve like smiles.