'There's This Girl I Know or Don't Know...' - JLG Clift

There’s this girl I know or don’t know depending on how you view things blonde hair black roots hanging low down past the blades of her shoulders to her waist or thereabouts flowing in fine feathered streams that I remember her preening until they were gleaming no matter how dark the day was.

I remember her looting through ethics books searching ever little nook and cranny wafting through articles about world wars global warming and the Vatican’s opinions on trannies among other things for some quick fix knowledge to scrape though another past paper her book was new and fresh; mine was old, taped up tapering and tattered at the edges I can still hear her nattering away at the back with her mates about the state of marvellously meaningless things.

I don’t recall whether she acts or sings but I remember her filing away to drama once a day occasionally I’d pass and catch her saying something about nothing to her fes wearing thespian eternally equestrian pal with a jaw like a loose pes dispenser dispensing a frankly dismal rendition of Hamlet’s grand soliloquy misquoting constantly so badly sometimes that I was sure they’d been toting joints between frees she had no interest in jobs or degrees I don’t think; she was all mouth all looks all smiles all winks all drink all drugs all hugs charming and disarming in equal measure - Or maybe not.

 I can count our conversations on my fingers yet she’s managed to tether herself to my thoughts all she’ll still linger for years to come her name from time to time ringing in my ears if I run out of ideas:

Where’s she now?

Where won’t she be?

Well that’s the beauty of her I don’t know and never will she could be anything or everything or nothing a blank canvas to paint a story on untainted by cold black fact that likes to hack away at my unrealities gracelessly gleefully ceaselessly. Her existence is a peaceful reprieve in a way she’s given my writing a new lease on life yet she said nothing and is nothing to me or for me but reason’s relentless baying is nothing but an unsuccessful attempt at treason against the powers of inspiration.

Today I write about the girls hair blowing in the wind down the street in spring in my head returning from a shift at GAP or maybe an arts and crafts store she owns or works at for or maybe a bar or a lunch the people around her are hunched and dark in bright clothes material rainbows reaching head to toe going back and forward to a soft focus nothingness a cityscape of soundless shudders like shadows or in rippling streaks grey scale tail lights high exposure their trails repeating over and over into the distance around the girl who’s extensions and dye are stripped like dandelion flowers back to her roots in her breath that's blowing back on her. She exhales the winds of change that change her and me led lifted from my mind leaving me to roam the endless stories of what the girl in pearl studded Uggs with a smug thug on her arm in one story setting off smoke alarms nonchalantly consciously unconsciously for fun in another rebelling ideas of what she could do swelling endlessly over the brim of my psyche – all these stories of what she could be rattle on listlessly as lovers in the rungs of discovery.

And I might be right I might be wrong but regardless in ignorance I carry on telling stories through her about her; to her; it doesn’t matter that she won’t know about the seeds she’s sewn that have grown into lush green ivy with golden brown leaves the gold leaving the beauty of the brunette behind blossoming throwing stones away that blocked a path I wanted to travel down. If she ever found out she’d probably laugh – or maybe not.

I don’t know and won’t know but in my mind it could go either way. In ambiguity I plan to stay and play with this pen and paper occasionally charting the capers of that girl I sort of know, or knew now I guess, and her tie dyed locks that love to shock.

Or maybe not.