Pastel Christmas

No sight of red and green in rainy Porvoo. Instead there were pastel blues and pinks. A spot of yellow. Cobbled streets that we imagine to be deadly when frozen over, but for now, almost safe even in heels. I found a wonderful mint green, embroidered morning jacket to go perfectly with the colour scheme of the city - will introduce you in due course. For now, I am content sitting on the sofa with a pile of chocolates and watching the lights on the Christmas tree. It might be what us Finns call a 'black Christmas' with no snow on the ground, but I am grateful for the mild temperatures this brings. I can enjoy a leisurely walk in the woods in my UK winter gear. The forest is so quiet after rain, mushy and wet, and you can hardly hear your own footsteps on the soggy moss - perfect for daydreaming and reflecting.

Christmas lights

I'm going home in two days. I've got absolutely no plans for Christmas but instead big, big plans for the year 2014.

It leaves me in the dark.

A stressful place where keys are returned, in a gesture much like receiving them: careless, yet heavy.

Where he says nothing but ‘thank you’ in a voice that is too soft after all the harshness that has passed between us, like it is going to be followed by a reconciliatory yet final 'goodbye'. Like he is relieved I have made it so easy for him. I don't stick around to hear it nor do I look at his face, which could reveal so many a thing. I am scared of things that are about to be said and witnessed.

Instead I duck out the door, muttering ‘I don’t know what to say’ in a breathless manner that suggests tears welling in the enclosed spaces of my eyes and as I stagger across the yard I hear the door lock. My breath, that I feel like I have been holding in all day, comes out in a billow of white matter and sounds like desperation. 

I do not know where this leaves us. Boundless, separate. Keyless. In the dark.

Stay golden

How do you know

You don't. 

A softness in her demeanour; lethargic, long muscles and buttery bones create an almost slothlike appearance. Edging along the sides of walls silently, observing everyone else in the room. Playing cards, chatting, drinking sherry from small crystal glasses that clink against their teeth.

She walks along, casually draping her gloved fingers against the wall, studying the patterns of the damp-ridden wallpaper. The shapes unite and break in intervals and she is mesmerised by them and the deep red arrangements that seem to hover in the air.

She looks at him, once, twice but never thrice. He only catches the back of her neck; unruly dark hair coiled up into soft curls, continuing all the way down and disappearing inside her dress. For a brief moment he imagines it released and wavy against the whiteness of a pillow on a bed, like a pool of blood. This makes him shiver in his chair, and he grasps his glass that bit harder and spills the sticky liquid onto his fingers, cursing. It seeps onto the cloth that covers the table and he thinks how it will leave an amber imprint there, forever marking the things he felt that night.

In your bed

In your bed I am filling the spaces between your covers

The bumps in your mattress and the gaps in the poor weave of your sheets