Fingers dance, dainty, along the ivory.

It’s happening.

Music swells into a shape. A structure. A bridge between now and then. A bridge that clears a path back to that moment. Forms a capsule that transports me back to then, back to that time.

That old life from two months ago. A life that waltzed away into the sparkling sunset. Heyday that glittered into ash. That moment before it all changed, before it got so complicated, so dark and difficult.

It was never meant to get this complicated.

My thoughts used to make sense. Time used to make sense.

Nothing makes sense anymore. Not since then.

Feel the humming in my chest now, reverberating sound that starts to overtake me. Born from deep inside, it expands and grows until it exists outside my body. Faint glowing aura surrounds me, the shadow of the person I was.

If I close my eyes, I feel it. The life I had. The freedom I had.

Feel my arms reach out to grab hold of it. Step into it. A shower of relief washes over me. My body is like a canvas, thick brushstrokes of calm are painted down my back. Tension melts away. It drips from my hips, down the legs of the seat beneath me. Collects in a puddle at my feet, colours seeping into the floorboards.

Crescendo. Notes are dancing, whirling around me now. Like dragonflies buzzing, a steady cadence of synchronicity. Feel their fluttering inside me.

Eyes slide close, my gaze falls inwards as reality starts to fracture.

It’s happening. The disconnect.

My body remains in place, but I escape. Lighter than this world, I float above it all. I rise higher and higher, up into the sky. Settle on a starry arch, comforted, enveloped by the night’s endless darkness. Blurry city lights below me, I watch them flickering, pulsing in time with the music. Constant motion. In perfect harmony.

She wanted to be up here. Whirling amongst the stars. I couldn’t take her here. To the heights she wanted to reach.

I float higher. Move on.

Away and away and back to then.

I see her now.

She is not here.

But I see her.

Green, almost yellow eyes, like the sun. She’s dancing somewhere. Prisoner to the rhythm. Bound to it, like Stockholm Syndrome. Refuses to escape it. Will not return. Dancing forever. With that beaming, unburdened smile. Melodic laughter, effortless, like a chorus of angels. Reflection of strobelight glimmering in her highlighter. Hair unkempt. Messy. Just like her. Messy and perfect. I remember now that her eyes always followed me, as those of a painting do. Feel them on me now. Warming me.

Mouth watering, I can smell her. Texture in the smell. Hint of something else. Could never quite place it, but it drew me in. Kept drawing me in. Like a flower you can’t help but bring to your nose. Again and again.

Enchanted me. As if my senses instinctively knew that every other smell would fall flat beside this one. A pinnacle never to be reached again.

So I inhale it now. Deeper. Deeper. Memorise the taste, the feeling, the feeling of that smell. Like I’m trying to become it.

Diminuendo. Softening. Slowing. Fading. Falling back to reality. Ground arrives beneath me.

Meaningless, empty applause hurts my ears. Fills me with nothing. The stage lights are so bright they burn my eyes. I search the crowd for her. She’s not here. I know she’s not here. She can’t be. But. Maybe?

Muscles in my face twitch from the effort of my plastic smile. Drop it as soon as I’m in the safety of the wing, settle back into a frown.

The craving begins again. Little, growing niggling rising from somewhere inside. Stronger and stronger, shifting when I try to scratch it, alerting me to the fact that I am missing something.

A hunger that cannot be satiated. Longing for something that cannot be replicated. Longing for a moment. For a feeling. For her.

It’s later now. A dark room. Dripping walls.

Ears thumping with the blasting bass, bringing motion to the shadows around me.

Strangers moving in unison, a mass of wide-eyed, slack-jawed bodies. Watch them embrace each other with loving hugs. They seem distant, very distant, but I feel their sweat flickering onto my arms.

I press down on the can in my hand. Palms enjoy the satisfying crackle of aluminium, before I run my thumb over the flattened surface, a texture comforting in its smoothness.

I can’t concentrate on the music. Out of sync, the rhythm dances out of reach. Signals are delayed. My feet catch the cue too late. By the time I get there, the music has moved on.

Moved on. She’s moved on. Away.

It doesn’t feel right. It’s not the same. Not without her. My throat twists around itself, like a snake around a branch. Wringing sensation that grows tighter with every spiral.

I escape outside, seeking oxygen to loosen the grip at my throat. Receive, instead, a lungful of stale, second-hand smoke. Better than nothing. The smoking area is loud with laughter, the thick haze of nicotine illuminated by tungsten lights. Their glow reflects off the sticky floor, decorated by butts and spilt liquids.

I stalk the corners like a ghost. People don’t notice me, look right through me, too engrossed in writing their own stories. My bubble of loneliness garbles their voices, echoing whispers, underpinned by static, like a radio stuck between channels.

I think now of how her voice shimmered out of her mouth. Pulled me in like a magnet. Bewitched me with its promises. Engulfed me in its softness. Lifted my head from my shoulders and sent it spinning around the room.

Difficult to replicate, impossible to capture. I have tried and tried. The harder I try, the more the sound eludes me. Muddied by time. I’m forgetting it. Only when I play that one song does the sound come to life. Come back to me.

When did it get so difficult?

Nothing makes sense anymore.

Not since then.

My thoughts don’t make sense anymore.

They escape down winding tangents. Trudge heavy footsteps through the graveyard of memories. Thick, spindly roots creep out from the graves, slithering on the ground towards me. Twist around each other in their eagerness to grab me. To lure me into them.

Sparking enticement from the hole in my chest, a tugging that reaches back to them. Begging them to take me, drag me, lay me down in the comfort of numbness.

It was never meant to get this complicated.

Nattering of bathroom conversations. Graffiti-covered walls absorbing grave, sweeping declarations of love. These vows, safe in the cramped cubicles, are professed in voices heavy with sincerity and slurred by substances. I splash some icy water onto my face. Tiny shock to my brain, a minute tremble that grounds me somewhat.

I need to stay focused. Cannot be drawn in by the assurances of temptation. Must not be misled by the hollow hopes that I can go back there.

I can’t. She’s gone. Moved on. Can’t bring her back.

Dab my face clean with my sleeves, looking at my reflection in the dirty mirror. My eyes are dull, vacant. Behind them, regrets loom like shadows around a body of unmoving water, tears that I refuse to cry. Reflective surface of glistening stagnation. The pool grows deeper, mossier. It is polluted by the decay of dormant potential drowned within it.

Craving builds, clamps its gaunt, spindly fingers around my shoulders. Breathes muttered assurances into my ears.

She can come back.

Just briefly. Just once.

One last goodbye.

Doesn’t need to be difficult.

Doesn’t need to get complicated.

Doesn’t have to make sense.

Back to the music now.

Await the rush, the feeling, the euphoria that will rip through my chest, tearing me in two. Lose awareness of my body. I lie back. My arms, bleached twigs, fall away from my torso. Take on a life of their own. Swirling shapes into the air. Eyes flutter closed. A swelling from beneath ripples the length of me.

It’s happening.

I give up control, let the waves take me. Feel their icy touch. It’s shocking, but not unpleasant. Blurry lights of the city in the distance. Feel her velvet skin as her smooth hands caress me. I lean into it.

Release control. Fading. Swelling. It’s happening. Fading. It takes me. The rhythm.

And finally, I’m lost.

Dancing.

Dancing again.

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The Woman's Gaze TikTok

The way he’s staring at me is unnerving.

Me, in a bookshop. Upstairs, view down onto the street. Him, on a bus. Top floor. Front corner. Best seat, windows all round. We lock eyes. The way you do with strangers sometimes. I, like a civilised person, avert my gaze. His remains fixed. I flash glances at him, one, two, three times, nerves twisting deeper each time at the intensity of his glower. Have half a mind to pull a face. Like, “What are you staring at?” Don’t trust him not to murder me, though.

I’m trying to work on my anger.

That’s what has me here. In the upper-floor cafe of a bookshop. Didn’t want to sit at the window, but the better tables were taken up by people talking. I contemplate shooing them away. Other places they can go to chat. Just shoot filthy glares at them instead. Jaw twitching. They notice. Share looks. Doesn’t stop them from dialoguing at the top of their lungs. Podcasters too poor to purchase recording equipment, instead subject a world of strangers to their tedious nattering.

My mother recommended a book. “Conquer Your Rage, Fix Your Mind.” I don’t think my mind is broken. Jaded, sure. But not broken. She does. She thinks I am too angry a woman. She says “glass half empty” is a positive outlook compared to mine; an overflowing fountain wouldn’t have enough water to satisfy me. Very clever, she feels when saying that. Smug, knowing smile. The one that mothers get when psychoanalysing the flaws in the humans they raise. Her dinner party last week was the final straw. She made a stew. I didn’t like it. Said as much. Sorry, but I don’t think you have to pretend to like a stew that tastes like Mrs Trunchball seasoned it with her blood, sweat and tears, if you don’t.

She’s nervous about my sister’s wedding next month.

Hence, the book recommendation.

It lays out steps to diffuse anger. Easy steps, according to the author, as stated in the preface, following his self-indulgent recounting of how the book came to be. Written as a woe-is-me passage that almost, almost manages to drown out how truly impressed with himself he is.

I feel it starting. The familiar sensations creep through me. Heating my ears.

It’s his glare. It really is unsettling. Feels like a threat. I try not to look at him. But feel it. You just know, don’t you? When someone is staring at you. His eyes, like lasers, nearly splinter the glass. Ravenous, he looks. A famished child eyeing up a buffet.

Step One.

Notice.

What am I feeling?

Tension building, pulsing in my jaw, stiffening shoulders. Clenching fists. Nails digging into my skin. The walls loom taller. Jagged edges, deepening corners. A German expressionist set. Pricking sensation caressing either side of my spine as the sun tilts behind a cloud, darker in here now. Haunting shadows cast across the cafe’s aged mahogany floors, loosened nails glinting, boards unfastened suggestively as if secrets lurking below battle to escape them.

My breath comes in counts of one now. In, out. No time to waste spreading through my body. Urgency about it.

Step Two.

Pause. Ask.

What just happened?

I brave a glance back out of the window. Still staring. That familiar darkness in his eyes. Unsettling lack of compassion. I’ve only ever seen it in men who let their mask slip. True nature revealed. Slight upturn of half his lip. Not quite a full snarl. His bus remains at a standstill for an unusually long time. Apparently stuck at the slowest set of traffic lights in Dublin. At a five-way intersection. All lights to red. No movement. No progress. Sometimes I think they do it on purpose. Make the traffic intentionally, infuriatingly slow. Nudging people closer to the edge of sanity.

Throat tightening. A pulse running through my lip. Pull them in tight. Mouth fills with warm spit.

Step Three.

Reflect.

Why is this affecting me?

Guffaw through gritted teeth. Lips part slightly to let out the indignant puff of air. I will admit, there does live in me a heightened sense of paranoia. I am deeply attuned to danger when it comes to men, definitely accentuated by my divorce. Recently single at 38 has been… let’s say humbling. Harrowing would be more accurate, but still too soft a word. My youth and beauty wasted on a lump of a man, forever second to Marlboro Reds and his porn addiction. If I could go back in time and kick my younger self, I would. In a heartbeat. Kick some sense into her.

I have always been angry. Not this bad. Not this bitter. But it was always there. Bubbling inside me, my body a pressure cooker, the heat turning up a notch with every passing year.

Step Four.

Name it.

I’m angry because…

…men hollered at me as I walked home in my uniform, Dad’s friend, over to watch some football, leaning out of earshot of the adults to inform me, through puffed out cheeks, that I was growing into my figure nicely, co-workers seeing no other way to manoeuvre around me other than to cup my hips, giving them a little squeeze. The teenager who shared private photos of me around school, the dawn of camera phones, already weaponised against us, photos I never wanted to send him, felt pressured to, I liked him, you see. In college, the classmate who didn’t take me blocking his last three numbers as a valid sign of disinterest, new number every week, hoping I might welcome his advances when delivered by a new arrangement of digits. Gathered over a lifetime, a trove of unwelcome trinkets, catcalls, wandering hands, comments muttered under breath.

Chest tightens, core tenses. Now on the edge of my seat, legs stiffened into planks.

Angry because that’s just the small shit. Not the real shit. Not the serious shit. My body reduced to nothing, an object for his desire, a doll of pleasure, stripped of humanity, like he owned it, like I owed it to him. Him and them. All of them.

Pressure cooker boiling on Her behalf. All the Hers. 62 million men a month, husbands sharing tips, tricks, insights on how to drug their wives, cutesy little messages, “Start with a low dose”, “She didn’t wake up, worked great”, photos, videos, their wives, supposed to be safe with them, sixty two million, six zeros, one month, the Island, the untouchables touching those who shouldn’t be touched, the red pills stained with women’s blood, brainwashing boys, dangling carrots of success, plastic food, in front of them, training them as soldiers, armed against the defenceless, to uphold a system. The price? Humanity. Safety. Decency. No way out.

Hardened jaw. Shoulders numbing. Knots forming. Fuck. Trembling through my body. This isn’t helping. It’s getting worse. Hands tighten around the table. Want to knock it over. Throw it through the window. Glass shattered, shards cutting the air. Destroy something. Destroy everything.

Lights turn green. The bus jolts.

He is gone.

I see it in my peripheral vision, but don’t watch. The heat of his scrutiny remains long after, searing my cheeks, dampening my palms till clammy fingerprints dirty the pages still in my hands.

Step Five.

Challenge.

Am I telling a story? Am I assuming intent?

Deep breath. Slight unclenching.

I perceive every look as a threat. Seize every comment, run it through an internal system, scanning it for danger. Safety mechanism. It keeps me protected. I need that. Don’t I?

As if to prove me wrong, I meet the gaze of a young gentleman. Hipster look about him, a burgundy parka, impressive moustache, colourful socks covering his ankles, revealed by his jeans pulled up, creased as he crosses his legs. He smiles. An exceedingly kind smile. Warmth emanates from it. I feel it toast my toes. Maybe it’s not all bad. Maybe I need to fucking chill. Not everyone is out to get me. In fact, most people don’t even notice me go by. Can’t even be sure he was staring at me from the bus. Could have been a seagull on the roof above. A fly dawdling along the window, its route lining the man’s eyes up with me. He could have just been zoning out, dead-eyed, unfocused. Probably just commuting home from work, contemplating what to have for dinner. Mouth pre-watering at the frozen pizza awaiting him. Or, a home-cooked meal. Or, whatever his delicacy of choice is.

Step Six.

Reflect.

What do I need?

Air.

I need to leave. I fold my book over, pages kissing, feeling that I’ve made more than enough progress for one day. I return the book to my bag, unread ink glowing off the pages. Smile at parka man as I pass, thanking him for the new pathways forming in my mind, twisting around the long-set, rotten one.

The stairs creak as I lumber down them, exhausted by the weight of my heavy footsteps. Maybe my mother is right. My wrath will sentence me to eternal loneliness, my fear dressing me in undesirability. I would love to find someone. Someone to soften my jagged edges. Happiness may be on the other side of a loosened grip. A trust in that it’s not all bad. It’s not all hopeless. It’s not all men.

If my mother could see me now. She’d be so proud.

After thanking no one in particular, I lean against the heavy door, eventually shouldering it open. Cool evening air. Welcoming, wafting away the sticky cobwebs spun in my mind. My shoulders make their departure from my ears, back into their rightful place. Instant ease. Maybe it was the bookshop. The words living between those walls, infiltrating my brain. The stories held in covers of varying thickness, entering my stream of consciousness through osmosis. Narratives forming. Complex tales, twisted and fantastical.

Step Eight.

Release.

Exhale so forceful it splutters my lips. That’s better.

The clouds are prettied, pink, the sky slowly darkening from a pale to a deeper, more royal blue. The setting sun breathes sense into the red-bricked houses. The steel gates paint delicate shadows over the steps leading up to them. I feel calm. Fucking finally. Hands unclench, stress drips from my elbows. My jaw, nearly marbled at this point from being constantly clenched, softens slowly.

There is still beauty in the world. I just don’t allow myself to see it. Viewing everything through blinders, every interaction through a thick fog of suspicion.

My thoughts, free from paranoid ruminations, wander to fantasies about my dinner. Girls’ dinner. I love a girl’s dinner. It makes me feel like I have my life together. Even though it heavily suggests the opposite. But that’s not for me to judge.

A tap on my shoulder. Removing my earphones, I turn. Expect to see a pal from an old life, someone I don’t want to catch up with. Or, a tourist, lost down a side street, seeking directions, who will certainly be getting the wrong ones from me.

No such luck.

Stomach expands, then shrinks quickly. Drops through the soles of my feet, taking all my wind with it.

His snarl is more of a leer now.

An attempt at warmth, perhaps, but not a hint of kindness to be detected in his eyes, so blackened that the pupils are indistinguishable from the iris surrounding them.

“There you are,” his voice oozes out of his mouth, a spitty, smacking sound, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

My blood, now ice cold, shudders my body as it courses through me. Frozen in place.

Okay. I was right. Disappointed but not surprised.

Sixty-two million.

Another twist on the hob. Pressure cooker heating up, about to explode.

Where else to turn but back to anger? She welcomes me. Takes me in her arms. The only arms I need around me. Wrapping me in her warm embrace. Protecting me.

I’m throwing that book in the bin.

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Inspired by - CNN Report

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Until recently, I worked retail at a run-down shopping centre in Dublin. It was not a glamorous life. The building was a bleak relic from a bygone era, a place where dreams went to die. Most of the units stood vacant, a discarded mannequin in the window telling the tale of what once was. The shop I worked in was a peculiar spot that couldn’t decide on an identity. It landed somewhere between a health food shop and doomsday prepper fodder. Organic vegetables, vibrant with colour, alongside rows of canned food, unappetising in their indistinguishable greyness.

I liked it just fine. Sure, minimum wage customer service work was never my childhood dream, but it was fine. It paid for my food and gave me a vague sense of purpose. What more could a girl ask for, right?

Granted, over time, the constant barrage of rudeness by strangers became a little grating. After a few years, it unleashed a sort of rage demon within my soul that could only be tamed with detailed fantasies of their gruesome and embarrassing deaths. I know it’s odd. We all have coping mechanisms that get us through the workday. This was mine. Maybe I wouldn’t have indulged in these fantasies had I known what would happen. Had I known that they would start coming true.

That brings us to Mr Rooney. He was a pompous, sleeveless sweater-wearing grump who seemed to derive ultimate gratification from berating weary staff. It always went down the same way, practised down to an art form. His shoulders would tense as soon as he arrived in the shop. We’d watch, breath bated, as he strolled pointedly around the store. His hands clasped tightly behind his back, he peered at each product over his nose-perched spectacles. First, he’d stop sharp in his stride. Then he’d remove his glasses, wiping them pedantically whilst looking around, hunting for his victim. Finally, a whisper of a smirk danced across his lips as he nestled his glasses back onto the dent in his nose ridge. “Hem hem,” the first throat clear was in the highest pitch. If no one appeared by his side in a matter of seconds, the second throat-clearing came. It was lower, slower, and more deliberate.

“Heeeem, heeeem.”

Eventually, a terrified staff member would scurry towards him, bracing for ridicule, and his tirade would begin. What started as a complaint about a minor discrepancy that had ruffled his feathers soon crescendoed into a long-winded, deep-cutting personal attack that left stronger souls than mine scrambled in a heap.

That fateful day, it was a banana. An admittedly very bruised banana. Some might call it a baking banana. I saw the glasses glint as he removed them from his nose. I looked around helplessly. There was no one else around. My stomach twisted like a cork on an expensive bottle of wine, mauled by a corkscrew.

I am not a confident woman. I’ve been described in many ways - meek, invisible, unsettlingly awkward - but never confident. This, unfortunately, made me a prime target for Mr Rooney’s chastisement. It began as usual. I hurried to his side after his first throat clear, hoping that might buy me a few brownie points. Naive thinking on my part.

“Young Madame,” he sneered with an undertone of delirium in his voice, “Do you see anything wrong with that banana?” I said nothing, instead shuffling and whimpering, pathetically bashful.

He began to ramp up.

“It’s funny, I thought bananas were supposed to be yellow. Clearly, I’m an idiot. Do you think I’m an idiot?” My palms became disturbingly sweaty as I shook my head.

And, he was off. He ranted on for a rather impressive seven minutes, until he had to stop on account of his heart rate monitor’s out-of-control beeping. By the end of it, his eyes were bulging. Spit had gathered and hardened around the corners of his mouth. He was gleeful. A job well done, he was probably thinking.

I know it shouldn’t have bothered me. I should have just let it roll off my back. But it did, and I couldn’t.

As I watched him stroll out of the shop, I pictured a shiny red Land Rover speeding around the corner, mounting the curb and knocking Mr Rooney off his feet. I envisioned his glasses shimmering in a rapidly growing pool of blood, no longer a prop for my torment. I imagined his splayed out fingers twitching as he took his last breath, the re-moisturised spit around his mouth drooling down his cheek, his mean eyes glazed over.

Again, I must reiterate that I never expected this to come true.

I gaped in transfixed disbelief as a red Land Rover sped around the corner. Watched in awe as it barreled towards a temporarily paralysed Mr Rooney. I had to bite my lip to contain my wondrous smile as his glasses hurtled through the air. People rushed to help him. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My thoughts ran marathons around my head, trying to make sense of what I’d just witnessed, crying out for an explanation - a trick of the light, a coincidence, or perhaps a dream?

I watched his fingers desperately twitching and knew it in the depths of my guts that this was my doing. I braced for waves of guilt, fear, even a sense of malaise. They never came. Instead, a surge of ecstasy rippled through my toes, rushed up my legs, and overtook my whole body. I swear I was hovering off the ground, buoyant at the prospect of having been granted Godly powers.

The rapturous glee did not leave me for that whole day. It tingled my fingers as the ambulance arrived. It swelled my heart as I watched the paramedics’ desperate, futile efforts in resuscitation. It came home with me, as questions filled my mind. Was this a once-off? A temporary gift of righteousness for a most deserving pest? Or was this my new reality? A vigilante, hungry for justice, emerging from the shadows? I lumbered up the stiflingly stuffy staircase towards my apartment and concluded that certainty comes through investigation. And so, the experiments began.

My first subject arrived the following day. She was a toffee-nosed nightmare, a woman who peaked in school. Kitted in what were surely her teenage daughter’s clothes, she spoke as though invisible fingers were clamping her nose shut. It was difficult to read her expressions through the comically large, dark-lensed sunglasses that covered most of her face. A brand name I’d never heard of was embossed in gaudy golden letters on the frames. I’m certain they cost a small fortune, and am equally sure that they were covering an eyelift or some other attempt at “youthification”.

I know I sound judgmental. It’s not her external traits that bring out this side of me. I’m really quite accepting. It’s the simple fact that she treated me no better than she would an unwelcome roach in her southern European timeshare.

Her request was simple; she asked me to point her towards our cosmetics section. My response was equally straightforward. I informed her that we had no such section. The sliver of cheek and forehead not covered by sunglasses reddened rapidly to a furious maroon. She became unreasonable. Belligerently repeating her request as if searching for a password that would grant her access to a secret section of the shop. One reserved only for those who displayed relentless persistence.

As she was my first subject, I kept my patience rather admirably. Though it started dwindling after I repeated for the hundredth time, “We only sell food here, I’m afraid,” still maintaining my sickly sweet customer service lilt. Her lips formed a tight pout. She showered me in menthol-flavoured spit whilst remarking, “A plain girl like you should really invest in some make-up. I don’t imagine you’re attracting many men with that face of yours.”

That comment sealed her fate. There was really no need for it. The fact that her gibe danced very close to the truth made it sting all the more. As I used my sleeve to dab her spit off my face, I set my mind free to roam. I watched from a distance as she tutted her way out of the shop, pausing outside to spark a cigarette. My plan was simple. The restaurant two floors above was halfway through some very noisy renovation. I was familiar with the clumsy kitchen porter whom I’d seen struggling to transport a new refrigerator to the third floor that morning. The events unfolded quickly. Her flame sparked. She tilted her head back slightly as she inhaled the minty smoke. I saw the fridge falling from the sky, averting my eyes in time to avoid watching her buckle under the weight of it. I am slightly ashamed to say that the thrill of karmic satisfaction was overwhelming - in a good way.

Things spiralled from there. I wouldn’t say I got carried away, necessarily. A more objective observer may beg to differ.

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