nine thirty-two Fred Edenborough (Year 13)
frame of developing film, captured in snippets carriage by carriage, as you slink into darkness. the chattering tracks fade and the memory of your touch, clamorous on my skin mourns the platform’s departed – nothing is left, but syllables beating the asphalt air from lips that are not yours. each familiar letter, shade and note, scribed to the drying score on which your every cadence is inked. ---9:35am--- i stand, hung upon the hanging frames in which your watching figure is projected. there is no script, i think, in amongst this art-laden tapestry, that can decipher my prose from jumbled verse; the nib of your tongue decorates the walls with my afflicted words. ---9:36am--- the night’s fragrances simmer, interlocking its unattended wisps into your hair; their benzedrine roots settled in your denim scent. the play starts, finishes – don’t forget the interlude! we travelled home, and still i felt as though the play that had unfurled for me was never mine to watch unfold. ---9:37am--- their mindless feet leading to the retrieval of nothing; i notice i am nervous. outside the street bellows, my senses whipped; as you fray your trouser ends: i stitch love’s patterned hems in endless knots, breathing and knowing, less and more – i crocheted these words, pocketing the trouser ends you tore. 9:38am. the nine thirty-two stops, and i follow the sequinned shifts, the crumpled and blue gowns,
gates curtail the workforce shuffle; absently, minds and feet flood to breach the assembly points of broken things. they sift through fractured memories, the night’s perspirations still visible through a sequinned shift, at odds with the odd nurse’s gown, blue and creased; the nightshift’s sleepless demand lingers in their eyes. sobriety settles, as their lazily choreographed chorus of limbs, luggage, expeditionary detritus clatters through the station’s slips – where is the nine thirty-two? ---9:32am--- on One Tree Hill, November’s rasping wind plays the ash trees. the rustle of auburn debris whistles autumn’s backing track – we sit, spectators to our unsaid thoughts. soft, winter-spiked gusts disturb the cinders of your cigarette; they jostle between our faces elusive as the dancing words between us, the unformed touch of anticipation now whole. your silvered-blue eyes brush with mine, briefly transfixed by the glimpse of a ley line – i smile as your sketch marks appear upon the pearly white canvas of my memory. ---9:33am--- humming lights and beams refract the lucid abandon of the floor, as you fray your trouser ends: i stitch love’s patterned hems in endless knots, breathing and knowing, less and more – i crocheted these words, pocketing the trouser ends you tore. ---9:34am--- partings on platforms are hardest to reconcile. a faceless train bearing you away no indication of direction with its motions, ceaseless – i choose to think of you in transit, a transient
We do not need the night to fix the stars We do not need the night to fix the stars We keep the constellations inside. We trace the lines between the stars To make pictures, To make life on Earth true to The sweet nothing of space. We name them: Fish, Dog, North, And are shepherded by their light. So when the stars flicker, Splinter, Burn out, Do we lose direction? Do we lose meaning? We do not need the night to fix the stars Above tiny places As when they fade,
This Beautiful Supernova
It’s dark in space And it’s sad and cold When you’re only illuminated by the lights Of those lightyears away from you. So that’s why I’m slowly collapsing into myself, Embracing the cold dark of space. On planets far away, a star is dying
And life all around will see This beautiful supernova In the sky, As the dark of space Engulfs me whole.
Above tiny places; They shine inside.
Poems by Laurence Skinner (Year 11)
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THE ALLEYNIAN 711
CREATIVE WRITING
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