Josephine March
a 20-something playwright & fiction writer with an affinity for gothic castles and old bookshops
Josephine March
a 20-something playwright & fiction writer with an affinity for gothic castles and old bookshops
a 20-something playwright & fiction writer with an affinity for gothic castles and old bookshops
a 20-something playwright & fiction writer with an affinity for gothic castles and old bookshops
I'll admit that when we met, I liked you more than I should have. That I went home and dreamed of seeing you in every mirror in my childhood home. That I felt your hands on my back as I danced to Billy Joel, alone in my living room, and imagined you with me.
Gold-trimmed dresses and lace-up boots have never quite been the same since you stood up on the table and Pasodobled to the beat of the music, and I felt like I wanted to be with you, to be you, you.
I crossed my heart and hoped to die, slit my palms and swore, another one-sided blood pact that you'd never know to keep and I'd never know to tell. A vow in sickness and in health, til-death-do-us-part, even though I know you weren't what I wanted you to be – a dream, a dance, a drug.
When we met, I liked you more than I should have. The scars on my palm barely healed from last time, fingerprints still on the knife. A promethean cycle, doomed to start again and again as I reach for that which is not mine and cry in surprise when I burn.
So I'll admit that when we met, I liked you more than I should have. But still, I got on the table and twirled with you until the world span out of control.
Although I usually enjoy the thrill of a cheap insult, I know that Nikolai du Romanet is at my ball to assassinate me, and so I've decided that I won't grant him the satisfaction of small talk before he does. "Your words usually wound me deeply." Nikolai pulls my closer by the small of my back to whisper into my ear as we waltz around the room, enveloped in a flurry of pinks, whites, and yellows as other couples twirl past. The short hairs on the back of my neck raise to stand on their ends, like the fur of a cat preparing for flight. "But I must admit, your silence hurts even more." "I wish I could say that the feeling was mutual," I respond before I can think better of it, "But I confess, I find the sound of your voice quite tiresome." Nikolai smirks. And God, how I despise that smirk, and how I despise that my heart stops when he smirks, and that I know exactly how to provoke that smirk and do so on purpose every time. "There she is," he says. "Come on, there's no need to be cold. The night is young. Let's have some fun while it lasts." He laughs as I scowl at him. "Oh, darling. If looks could kill." "I thought you'd prefer to do it the old-fashioned way." I reply. "I suppose I do." And I know I could pull myself out of his grasp and run, but the waltz hasn't ended yet and I don't want to cause a scene, not until absolutely necessary, so I let him spin me until I'm dizzy and flushed, and my heart pounds in my ribcage like a maiden in love.
The opening bars of a DNCE song, and all of a sudden, I'm thirteen, and I am in the small, grey Mini Cooper of my childhood summers with my grandmother, still alive. For once, her excitable poodle mix – and my self-proclaimed best friend – Hendrix is not next to me in the back of the car. Instead, my grandmother, my parents, and I are all dressed in black from head-to-toe as we head towards the funeral of my grandfather, and I am trying to pretend like this is not the first death I have experienced.
I'll keep on hoping, sings DNCE. Cake by the ocean.
I'm thirteen, and I don't know the word euphemism yet. Neither, as it seems, does my grandmother, as she laughs and says, Your grandfather loved cake and the seaside. It's almost as if the radio knew where we were heading.
It's the only time I'll laugh all evening, but it makes me smile, even now, one radio host bringing a car full of sad people a minute of happiness by playing – as I would only realise much later, I've never been much good at recognising euphemisms, even in adulthood – a song about having sex on the beach. A moment of absurdity. A real-life fantasy.
my mother calls me a poet but the truth is, i only ever write poetry when i'm not quite awake, i dream in spoken-word poetry, stand before doors & when i wake up, i cannot remember whether it represents the beginning of something new or the end of something old. i read kafka before bed & wonder if my father hating me would have made me a better writer, or if it simply would have made me cockroach-scared of the world.