Vivienne R. Smith wasted her youth on academic pursuits and saving the world through environmental science. Having established that writing was a lot more fun, she is now attending the first year of the Hagley Writers Institute Creative Writing Course where she is rising to the challenge of merging the worlds of science and word play. She is collating a series of poems for her first book.
Slow motion
You sit there don’t you with your jeans down around your ankles and you want to crap, but it’s just not happening and you glance around the bathroom and you see the towels all hanging there and one of them is striped and worn and it’s yours and it’s next to her thick white one that she told you is ivory and you think “ivory for Christ’s sake!” and you wipe yourself on it because it’s soft, but mostly to make sure it’s covered in as many germs as possible so they’ll crawl all over her skin and into her hair that you remember smells of apple straight from the bottle and you look at that bottle on top of the shower cubicle and think how if you stole some hydrofluoric acid from the lab you could put it in the shampoo and her hair would be ok and her scalp would be fine, but the headaches would start as the bone dissolved and it would be real slow and no one would know so that as they lie there together in that bed that’s too bloody close to the wall you could hear her complain about the head pain and he would comfort her and you’d know, but it’d be too late and they’d be flowers at the funeral like those on the chipped tiles along the back of the hand basin where her toothpaste lies along with her toothbrush that looks brand new with really straight bristles and your one’s next to it and it’s pretty stuffed - though you’ve started using hers - and the tap’s dripping and there’s blue copper stains running down into the plughole and it’s just like the bog with things put down it to be flushed away only sometimes they don’t and she gives you an earful and it’s such a bloody pain when there’s a brick in the cistern and how long do you have to wait pulling the handle when that’s the end - not like this when it’s all still happening - and you study your magazine where the rifles all look really well machined and you just know that they’d feel smooth and powerful in your hands and you reposition yourself on the seat and you think about her arse sitting there too and how your skins’ have been as intimate and close as that though she looks down her nose at you and wouldn’t ever admit that she shitted, but she does and there are other things too that she wouldn’t admit, but they happen and you know ‘cause the tampon packet is there on the shelf and that stuff is all bloody dirty, and disgusting, and bloody and you know she’s like that even if you can never see it and her underwear is there on the handrail and it’s damp still, and soft, and spotless like her skin though her face-paint is there too and there’s probably other things that she’s always covering up, but everyone thinks she’s nice with that long, long, blonde hair and it might be hard to see - not like your dark pubic ones on the soap that she’s always on about - but the strands are lying there all over the lino at your feet that start to shuffle about a bit ‘cause it’s getting cold and the louver windows won’t close and she thinks it’s great to get fresh air in there because she tells you that you stink out the bathroom, but it’s just what happens isn’t it, like if you eat it’s got to come out - if it does come out – and the muscles are doing things, but you can’t force it and that release hasn’t happened yet, but it will.
