Until The Last Light Goes Out I Was Still Here
By Dorothy Spencer
Don’t talk to me about discipline – I
just stood outside smoking with no
pants on and I’m not even pissed.
Out of sleepers, my insomnia is so
rampant I’ve taken every soporific
drug left in the house just to
engorge the next four hours so it
fills the hole. You want to look at
me. You want to look at me. You
look at me – I’m the last person you
want to look at. Trust me, it doesn’t
matter how far down you descend,
when they say spiral they mean sheer
drop, and yes, when there’s nowhere
left to go you’ll find a recess, you’ll
find the back alley, or the bad dream,
or the waiting room, or the black
out; it’s there; you won’t have to
struggle far to reach it. There is no
end. It goes on forever; I dream of a
house and every room is empty. I
look for you – in a thousand and
sixty-nine nights I have not once
sensed you there. Sometimes there is
a broken chair, a falling curtain, but
no body, no bloodstream. I get wet
thinking about the needle you’re
holding.
You make a scale model
of my life. There’s the park bench,
and the graveyard; the people
looking on; the jumpers; you
haven’t made me yet; you’re
worried I’ll look different, there’s
more I can lose; the pain is
unquantifiable – it doesn’t quite
work as a 3D art-piece, for all your
efforts – you can’t fashion clay
into a realistic ghost. You can’t
bear to touch the parts of me
you’d have to fix.
When you go, turn out the light for the last time.
I’ll have to feel my way around the
walls to find the switch. And I told her
when the switch goes on I can write it
– but you know there is no switch. I
say a lot of things for money and sex;
The pain is not palatable, I know;
maybe if we re-model the book as a
script and draft in Michael Fassbender.
Someone attractive in place of me;
minus the scars – the scars could sell,
but then again, your readers think they
want to see them, but they crave the
smooth skin those other writers wear
for bed. So turn out the light; if I’m
crying, just pretend you have
somewhere to be; yeah I know you’re
lying. Yeah I always know you are.
Don’t worry about it – who would
want to lie next to me? No one sleeps
next to the ravine, do they? Or do
they? Oh, the junkies, yeah. Oh, and
the molested. Oh, and the emotionally
replete; and no, these hundred beds
I’ve died in this year didn’t like me
either; I left them so clean; it was
almost as if I didn’t exist.
