Wind whistles through ropes, and the bells tangle with gulping breath. All words caught there. And her heart caught there too.
You can sit on the quay, and stare out at the water. You can sit on the quay and forget you are nobody's daughter.

Cleo thinks:
I am alone
I am free

She thinks:
"Through the clouds I'll never float
until I have a little boat
Shaped like the crescent moon."

She read that someplace, sometime.
The past is just a pile of blank paper.
Her memories are a load of made-up stories.

And

And couldn't you have tried a bit harder?
Couldn't you have forced out bravery
and understanding like paste from a
tube - a snake of your courage.

And couldn't you have loved me
a bit more? Wasn't there a spell
or a mantra, to chant me into
your affection? Imagine I'm a
kitten or a duckling - does that help?

And why did you paint me
such a rotten portrait? Couldn't
you have given me away forever
to save this ripe hatred? The
hatred blossoming and burning
through my baby heart.
You stunted me - couldn't you have set me free?

I breathe but it tastes like coal
And I see but it's overexposed
And I taste but it's all aspirin
powder and cigarettes.

Couldn't you have left me
alone? Because I
touch but the only one that
feels is you.

You numbed me
And all I could do was watch
And all I could do was join in
And we both let me disintegrate.

Cleo's mother died last night. She took control too much. And Cleo doesn't even know who she's angry with anymore.

She thinks;
I am jealous you escaped
I am terrfied
I am alone
I am free
She thinks, I crave to have my mother back, my mother who was never really there at all.

There are a million ways to destroy yourself, you can burn or drown or cut or hang, you can implode, ingest, give up, throw up, jump from, bury, rip, or you can simply disappear.
If you vulture-yourself, how long before you're eaten up?

There's a new man now, he must love her, he must fancy her, he must want to screw her. He spoke and looked and gave her a present. Sweat beaded on his temples.
And Cleo was so wrong and sick and broken, but he didn't seem to care.

Cleo wants a boat to sail away, or wings to fly across the sky, or a fast car to drive into the ground. She is going, going, gone.

Bird Guhl by Anthony and the Johnsons

I am bird girl,

I am bird girl,

I'm bird girl now.

I've got my heart here in my hands

I've got my heart, here in my hands now.

And I've been searching for my wings,

I've been searching for my wings some time.

I'm gonna be born

gonna be born into soon the sky

I'm gonna be born into soon the sky.

'Cause I'm a bird girl

and the bird girls go to heaven,

I'm a bird girl

and the bird girls can fly,

bird girls can fly,

bird girls can fly.

Cleo can feel it bubbling, this terrifying furnace underneath her skin, popping and frothing, it simmers and threatens.
She knows she'll be leaving in a blaze of glory, an explosion, a climax of fire and drums and screams. She thinks, I am outside of this world, I am outside of you all, one day I will be flying free.

Cleo chews the inside of her lip, and thrusts out her chest and worries her teeth with her tongue. Cleo doesn't know when to speak, or what to say, she forgets what you're meant to do.

She thinks about her father and desires him too much, and dreams about his hands, and wants to touch his face. She thinks about her boy and his suffocating kindness, she thinks about her mother and how she seems so diluted and so weak.

They say she's ill, her mother, they told her that she's not well at all.
Cleo hears but doesn't really listen, and she knows its bad but doesn't feel the pain.
If everyone you love dies, or leaves, or disappears, who do you become? Cleo validates herself through other people, other human beings proving her existance. When there's no one left then she can only fade away, or burn up like a phoenix.

She always chooses fire.

Cleo tears some music paper from the book and scribbles, she writes and rubs and spits, clenches fists and pummels at the page. Sheet after sheet is torn to shreds until it says what she is really trying to say;

It will take a lot for me
to believe you if you ever say you love me
If you even maybe just like me a little bit
I won't trust you for years
- I will doubt it
until you get so tired
of fighting that you leave me.
And I will be proved right.

But being right is lonely
I would rather be wrong wrong wrong
Every day of my life
if it meant you would stay
and never leave.

She writes his name on an envelope, and his address and puts two stamps on just in case and walks to the post box, red as her shame, and her hand hovers at the slot; the slot is a choice, the slot is honesty and weakness. It is freedom.
But bad people don't get choices, bad people like her should not speak, should not cry, their breath should not be heard.
So with a lighter all is turned to ash, the ink and ghosts of music rise in flame, the words evaporate to passing thought.

She turns away, she zips her lips, and throws away the key.

Mother

your spine is a set of piano keys,
each hollow bone tinkles
and plucks
and the tune is your heart beat
and the sky is my home.

In your mouth are teeth made
of smoke
and words false as air
that wrap me up.
they wrap and twist and turn.

on the swing in the park,
boys kiss me and
taste your bitter hertitage on
my gums, their lips burn
because of you.
i pass on the disease.

have you ever really touched me?
i cant remember now
your fingers in my hair.
did you buckle my shoe
or lick my envelopes so
i wouldnt cut my tongue?
or was that someone else?
it must have been

with you
everyday, i cut my tongue.

There's a boy on the bus. He's not the same as the girls at school that Cleo wraps around her fingers, he doesn't let himself get used and moulded into what Cleo wants. Cleo wants people to manipulate, but he is much too stubborn.

She learnt from her mother all the ways to control people, the way her mother controlled her, so easy to learn. But he's too real, too sharply focused, too nice. Cleo thinks, "Inside I'm dancing", but her feet are firmly stuck to solid ground.

Cleo plays a game, she tests people, pushes them to limits, measures them with abstracted nonsense.
If I sit down before you, you love me
If I get in at exactly 4.38, you love me
If you take a sip of tea...now, you love me
If you sneeze twice, you love me
If I see more than three birds today, you love me

Birds. Cleo sees magic in flocks of birds, she wants to float and fly away, but knows she never can - hatred makes you heavy. A thousand ballons wouldn't do it, not if they were filled with gas, not if you tied her to a space rocket or strapped her to an albatross, she will always be a dead weight. Her heart is a big flat stone.

Cleo plays a game, she tests herself, pushes herself to the boundaries of sanity. Makes herself repeat and repeat the same phrase on the piano, the same song, over and over and over till she gets it right. She thinks; If I get it right, you'll love me.

Father

Preffering to be alone, she would
lock herself in the bathroom and
stand in front of the small mirror
beneath the wall heater, which
she let blow hot, warming
the frozen coldness of the tiles

Slowly, undressing herself in that
close light, with imaginary miles
between her and him, she
was almost comforted by
her own hands caressing herself,
imagining they were his.

Palms on the wall, face flat against
it too, she tried to force out the
tears that blocked the way to
happy relief. But if no pain seeks
to leak - what can you do?

Preffering to be alone, she would
lock herself in the bathroom
each time hoping it might
bring him back to her.

It's all her fault, and she knows it. Cleo burns with the guilt, always feeling her face and skin and hair must be bursting into flames with this shame. Because Ma' had a baby and it died, but more than a baby, Ma' had an answer and a cure and a new hope, and it all died too, it died with the little baby boy.

And there was blood and shouting and Cleo was in the way, standing in the way not moving or breathing, because it hit her then that she'd made it all happen. She closed her eyes and wished for her mother to only want her and only need her and to never have another child to destroy; if I can't be loved by her, she thought, can I not be the only one destroyed by her? It's a dismal title but at least it means something. Now all that wishing has plucked the baby out of life. He never even got to cry and Cleo would give anything now to hear his midnight screams ringing through the house.

And that house becomes a prison, its hell, its a hole that her mother keeps digging deeper and deeper, scratching into the earth with her bleeding fingers and her endless tears drowning them all. Cleo thinks, I am drowning in you.

The solution is to pick up all the misery and make herself the root cause, the reason, the catalyst - all of it now, is dumped on her head. Her father, the baby, her mother, the sadness and anger and constant confusion. But it's ok, it suits her. Death becomes her.

Cleo doesn't speak very much. Her silence says "I have asked you before, and you did not answer" Thats how she protests. She says, "I reduce myself as a way of growing tall, I am so small you will not see me stab back my revenge" Because sometimes she feels that way, like stabbing and crying and blinding blundering through the hearts of them all.

She smiles more now - here in this house with Jason, and Charlotte - a calm sea in the camality of her mothers mania. But no Granddad. That is the worst part.

She sees the soldiers and the policeman, she sees the angry men lock their gaze with other angry men, she sees the milkman and the teacher, and the neighbours and their children and the face of God - and amonsgt all this she searches for her father, always searching for the face of this man she knows so well and has not met.
She is so scared that if she ever were to see him, he would cease to exist.



Who Will Sing Me Lullabies - a song by Kate Rusby

Lay me down gently, lay me down low,
I fear I am broken and won't mend, I know.
One thing I ask when the stars light the skies,
Who now will sing me lullabies,
Oh who now will sing me lullabies?

In this big world I'm lonely, for I am but small,
Oh angels in heaven, don't you care for me at all?
You heard my heart breaking for it rang through the skies,
So why don't you sing me lullabies,
Oh why don't you sing me lullabies?

I lay here; I'm weeping for the stars they have come,
I lay here not sleeping; now the long night has begun.
The man in the moon, oh he can't help but cry,
For there's no one to sing me lullabies,
Oh there's no one to sing me lullabies?

So lay me down gently, oh lay me down low,
I fear I am broken and won't mend, I know .
One thing I ask when the stars light the skies,
Who now will sing me lullabies,
Oh who now will sing me lullabies?

Who will sing me to sleep,
Who will sing me to sleep?

Cleo has a father, she knows it, it doesnt matter that he's not there or that she can't see him. You can't see God and they say that he's real. It's the same thing, isn't it?

She loves him, beyond belief, and he is the good-guy, the superhero, the Greek God, the fixer, the magician and the clown. He is strong and tall and gentle. But he laughs as loud as he wants.


Words, Wide Night by Carol Ann Duffy

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

I am beginning to feel that for this person not to exist would be ludicrous!

Almost certainly my name will be Cleo - this suits me. It is not too sweet or naive, which she certainly is not.

So many memories to write about and picture, and so many people to create and lives to build. It is almost quite overwheleming and we've barely even started. But it consumes me in a good way, an exciting way, I am so attatched to this imaginary self already.


Cleo's hair is curly, and Joan clips it into old fashioned styles, which Cleo likes.

Ian teaches her to read in his office. The door bumps the bottom of her bed if you open it too far.

Her Ma is sad and tired, she laughs nervously and rubs her head. Sometimes she shouts. But then she sings too, and the singing is the best part.

I have a home and a school and a church, I have Ian and Joan, and my mother Grace. I have Shaun from school and his dad, I have Molly and Michael, Mrs Johnson and Mr Hillsborough.

And all of a sudden there is this new man...

This project is the beginning of a very new and interesting process for me...almost as new as writing a blog! Isn't this strange, me writing to a faceless 'you' that might not even be listening! Maybe thats why people like these, its so anonymous, but personal enough to feel some kind of katharsis (sp?)

I am compelled by the idea of having an imaginary self - human beings and the differences and similarites between them fascinate me, and I love the idea of almost building your own person, but without being random and meaningless. Drawing on real people and real behaviour patterns to create something unique, and yet wholly plausible.

My 'she' (as I have decided to refer to her) is in initial stages of 'life'.
Using traits and testemonies from people I know we have begun to build her up from the beginning, bringing in colours of other peoples reactions and behaviour.
We have talked a lot about the affects of only knowing one parent/losing a parent. I have realised there is a remarkable difference in having never known someone, and losing someone that you did know. Perhaps it's easier to love somone who has died if in life they were worth loving. How can you even have feelings for someone you've never known? Even if they were a biological parent or blood relative, is blood really thicker than water?
I can imagine resentment comes into it hugely - hopefully a parent that has died did not choose death, whereas a parent that is absent or left chose to do that. I am reminded of a quote from a slightly slushy romcom film 'P.S. I Love You' (not a highlight of my film taste!) One woman's husband has died, whereas her mothers husband left her. The mother says "...and its so much easier being abandoned by choice is it?" What is more painful? To say an eternal goodbye to someone who loves you and doesn't want to leave, or to be left by someone with the knowledge that they do not want to know you, but they are still alive and well..?