Kjersti Furu

 

Steadfast Tin Soldier

There are days when you wish you hadn’t bothered to wake up at all. Days when the bedsheets smell so comforting and you don’t need the telly, you don’t need anything to distract you from the badly painted ceiling and the fading daylight casting animal-like shadows over your thighs. The vacuum of smelling the pillows and imagining that kissing them would make him reappear. Would make you not hate yourself, would make you not turn your back on him because you can’t stand having him this close, can’t stand anybody touching you in that way and still there is nothing you yearn for more than for someone to run their hands over your body, someone to desire you, someone who’ll just hug you and hold you close, tell you that you are okay, that things will be okay. And eventually you need to get up, get dressed, get drunk, and hopefully, by the time night falls, or some time before the sun rises again, you will fall asleep on top of your duvet, still wearing your clothes even if they’re wet from the rain, leaving them to dry over night but when you wake up they'll still be damp and sweaty.

CP

Kjersti Furu lives in Norway and enjoys lying on the floor listening to music in headphones. She started writing down stories when she was six and hasn't stopped since. It's all about making sure you'll never run out of ink. Or eyeliner. Every now and then she'll post stuff at http://kissingpillows.wordpress.com/

Kjersti Furu

Vacuum

This is the last time. I'm making a promise that this'll be the last time and I'm nailed to the floor, feeling the floorboards against my chest, my stomach, my thighs. My throat is sore from all the cigarettes and I'm trying to count the cigarette ends in the Majorca ashtray, breathing heavily and the ashes spreading out on the floor. All your vinyls are scattered around me, some of them I've taken out of their covers, the black discs reflecting the lights from the streets. You don't know anything about this. You don't know anything about lying here breathing in ashes, breathing out ashes, breathing and knowing that you're actually alive, no matter how unpleasant, how pleasant. You don't know anything about how it's almost 5:30 in the morning and I can still hear the wind rattling in the scaffolding across the street. You don't know anything about lying here and listening to the world being sound asleep because you are deaf there under the covers; are your toes still peeking out from underneath your duvet? I lift my arm and drag the needle back onto the Billie Holiday record, hoping for a second to make a scratch to forever remind you of these nights you do not know of. This will be the last time.

CP

Kjersti Furu lives in Norway and enjoys lying on the floor listening to music in headphones. She started writing down stories when she was six and hasn't stopped since. It's all about making sure you'll never run out of ink. Or eyeliner. Every now and then she'll post stuff here.