Wake before dawn all tangled in my sheets, feels like there’s no returning to sleep, and my things are scattered through the bed; filters, papers, napkins full of journal entries to be glued down later. The force with which I was thrust into wakefulness, makes me feel that someone is not ok. (He messaged me saying I love you.. just a minute ago)

So I sing myself daydreams of past and future selves, try to fall back to wonderland.. no luck, get up, put your boots on, go out in the rain. Feels like it’s been raining for days, like I don’t know how there’s anything left in the sky. Walk up gutters like tiny asphalt rivers, with plastic ducks and rubber seahorses and oil slicks. Glittered monkey dropped by some small thing. Slowly drenching through as the rain gets heavier, harder – no, neither, just denser. Like the weight of the rain here stays always the same. Little cotton jacket sticking down to my back, drupelets jumping from my fringe to my eyelash, I keep brushing them away. The cement at the cafe is dusted with tiny flowers like miniature frangipani confetti.

A guy once told me he was an environmentalist because he didn’t throw his cigarette butts on the ground.

Rocky little secluded little beach just for me, hidden behind dead coral chunks and covered in sea glass. I think to take a purple lump thrown up onto the sand but then think better of it; shouldn’t steal things from the places they belong, shouldn’t take them from their native lands.

Tide coming in, sun coming out. Rotten coconut skull cracked open on the clay earth. Scarf off jacket off, thin layers of fabric revealing inky skin. Snake tattoo looks like he’s swimming through yesterday’s shells.

I swim like a lonely bird back through the pitter patter of gauzy drops.