Wow. Seriously. This is now a favorite, definitely up there.

I need the sort of blue that rips your inside out. You don’t see blue like that round here.

I imagine Shadow arcing his arm and spilling yellow across the grey. Spilling sunshine.

I liked that he had hair that was growing without a plan. A grin that came out of nowhere and left the same way.

OMG. Did not see that one coming!

Kept dreaming of this spot she had on her neck, this tiny country. I wanted to visit, to paint a picture of what I found there, a wall with a road map of her skin.
Mrs J paired us up for a research assignment on Jeffrey Smart and I was watching that spot and she looked up from her book and caught me making travel plans. ‘What?’ she asked.
'Nothing,’ I said. ‘Only. I was thinking. We should see a film.’
She sat there tapping on the table with her pen and my blood was tapping and I was all desperation and no cool, sitting there making plans to move to some country far off the map. But then she said yes and my chest got sucked somewhere and I walked around with this hole in me all week. I kept thinking I wouldn’t make it to Friday night.

But before Beth left she came up to the counter and said, ‘You should ask me out.’
After that day she took the world off my chest, lifted it so I could breathe.

At the start there were moments, blinking moments, when we were lying together and it was warm and I could smell flowers on her skin and turps on my hands and I heard her voice with my nerve endings. Heard her with my blood and skin and I forgot things.

I escaped onto the wall, a painted ghost trapped in a jar. I stood back to look at it and I knew the sad thing wasn’t that the ghost was running out of air. The sad thing was that he had enough air in that small space to last him a lifetime. What were you thinking, little ghost? Letting yourself get trapped like that?

His hair’s still unplanned, though.

The Daytime Things

The water was lower than it had been for a while because rain was starting to feel like a story people told.

Again we have a silence that only astronauts can fully understand.

‘She sounds smart.’ I try to make that comment seem casual but weirdly, anything I say about Beth comes out of my mouth dressed in a full-length ball gown.

I keep my hands on Lucy’s shoulders even though her skin’s burning me all the way up my arms. I don’t mind the feeling. The road rolls by and my brain rolls with it. Thoughts spill from my head to my hands. They’ll tap till I paint the thoughts right out of them. (When something like this comes from a boy)

I stand behind her, watching her watching my work. I feel like I’m shedding skin, feel like if she turns she’ll see a skeleton man behind her and then she’ll know.

She’s the strangest girl I’ve ever met. I didn’t know she was this strange when I asked her out in Year 10. I’m not sure I would have asked her if I did. (To me that sounds like a compliment)

If we touched I wouldn’t be surprised to hear chiming.

I pull her hair back and see that spot on her neck and think how I’d like to get closer. You’d have to be a different guy for that to happen, the shadows say.

(And how they talk about art)The reason I love that Rothko painting so much is because, like Ed said, I don’t have to put what I feel into words. I look at it and while I’m staring I understand something about love. It’s not pink. It’s different reds bleeding into each other. Mum and Dad are somewhere in those reds. They were closer to crimson when they were fighting, but since Dad moved out there’s been this quiet around Mum.

‘You mean you don’t want to do it with a guy who likes art anymore?’ The way he says ‘do it’ makes me zing quite a bit.

‘Who is the universe, anyway?’ Daisy asks. ‘I mean people are always talking about it, but the universe must have better things to do than eavesdrop on three girls in a toilet cubicle.’

‘In your head, Shadow was this great person and I’m nothing.’ Her eyes keep pinning me down. ‘I can barely even read.’ (Don't make me cry)


Graffiti Moon - Cath Crowley