Dribs and Drabs

[Mia Keystone]

I write things. Poems and short stories and such.

So I will post them here

[Mia Keystone]

Path Less Travelled

My dogs were running ahead of me, straining against their leads. It was getting dark, and trains lit like elongated glow worms rumbled over my head like moving earthquakes.

Twilight, a word now too readily associated with the bastard children of Nosferatu and Dracula, is an eerie time, when the light is the shade of purple one mostly associates with bruises and the sun like a vast dull orange sliding down a grey wall. The bike path that snaked next to the creek is out of sight from the train station that lay just a quarter of a mile ahead and I couldn't stop looking behind me for men with stranglers hands.

One hand gripping the twin leads, the other stuffed in my pocket and fingering a lone cigarette (I had taken three with me and was determined to resist finishing them all off) my mind was plotting escape routes and guessing how fast and how far I could run if chased.
My pace didn't quicken, though perhaps my breath did as I imagined...

Imagined.

Sometimes, an active imagination can be a bad thing, for by the time I had reached my door I had already seen my funeral.

[Mia Keystone]

Don't Rock My Cradle

There are some things that, when said from the mouth of a significant other, make my teeth ache like I just bit into a sheet of tin foil with a mouth full of fillings.

The chief offender is baby.
I really really really dislike seeing people call each other baby.
For me, the word baby conjures an image of a screaming pink blob in a blue jump suit and matching bobble hat going red in the face while it poops itself. Funnily enough, this is not something I enjoy thinking about when talking to a loved one, even less while being intimate!

Because for me, being called baby means one or two things:

a. this guy sees me as an infant, therefore feels intellectually and physically superior, and that they should guide and teach and protect me. The physical thing MAY be true, but after dating someone who didn't understand when I apologized for patronizing him, I really dislike men assuming they're smarter than me. And I HAVE a father, thanks all the same. I don't need someone who I'm sleeping with acting that way. It is both confusing and terrifying.


b. when they see me they think of babies, which means getting me up the duff and going through a process that I have heard people comparing to having to shit an apartment block, WITH balconies, while pooping in front of strangers, then leaving me to deal with the squealing pink blob while he goes off to work for the next 18 years

And THIS is why I do not like being called baby.

[Mia Keystone]

Subtle like A Lion's Cage (journal from London last year)

I'm wearing an overly large shirt and denim shorts and can only think that this outfit makes it look like I just had sex. I suppose having intact makeup rebukes that assumption but I am so used to dressing formally that I feel very out of place.

So I'm wearing one of mum's old necklaces, just to help retain my sense of equilibrium between acceptable and uncouth.

It has been an interesting day; I have learnt the hardship of getting my hair cut by a hairdresser with an accent so thick I couldn't fully understand her. Even hair cutting terminology differs from country to country it seems. I have never heard a hair dresser in Australia refer to hair being "graduated". Also, I went in for a trim and somehow ended up with a brand new hairstyle. It was one of those situations where you walk out in a daze, until you look in the mirror and your vision becomes knife sharp as you ask what the hell have they done to you?!

You know you're fucked when your hairdresser is fixing her own hairstyle while cutting yours. As in, with scissors in hand. Disconcerting when she's trimming your fridge and those blades are millimetres from your eyeballs. One final note about my hair (I know, I am being such a typical girl/metro guy) is that it's been straightened for the first time this year, and I keep thinking that with the right makeup I would look like I had come from one of those 90s films about the future.

It is cloudy and muggy today, which is my favourite kind of weather because as far as I am concerned, vampires had it right about the whole "sun is death" thing. And I mean the real vampires, not the glitter-twats. Also, I love wearing coats.

I've reached a stage where I feel lonely and satisfied all at the same time, and don't hate myself for eating half a small block of Green and Black Mayan chocolate (with a twist of orange!). Still, would like a cuddle right about now. I'm turning 19 in two days and really, can only stress about how it will take me at least three years to finish acting school and is 22 too old to start a career? Kate Winslet was in Sense and Sensibility at that age! And that's assuming I get in first round which, despite my family's (well, my dad and my brothers) assurance it will not take as long as I fear, I'm still thinking 27 and that IS too old to start an acting career.

(Just quickly, mum needs to get that saying I have as good a chance as anyone else is really not helpful and or encouraging.)

Then again, given my apparent acting stereotype I won't get to play the roles I suit until I'm 45 anyway. Good think I idolize Judy Dench or that could be disheartening.

This was a very odd rant. Enjoy!

[Mia Keystone]

The Shortest of Short Stories

"It's difficult," the woman explained as she put down the gun on the table,
"having a tone deaf violinist as a flatmate"

[Mia Keystone]

Late Night Drabble

Once upon a time
No, that's not right.
There was a day when
No, fuck, not it.
It started at the beginning, as events of major occurrence have a habit of doing.
That will work
The beginning in this case was a sense of deja vu. or be precise, there was a nagging sense of having seen that particular...
What was it again?
There was the sense of having felt that about seeing those people�
This is not working
It was a sort of absence of feeling, an awareness that the stimuli was not provoking the correct response and that this, this was a worry. Seeing the man, the way he moved and his eyes and how he looked at her. And she looked back and there was this emptiness. An awareness of an absence. Like looking for a book in the place you last left it, and only seeing the outline of it in dust.
Ok, this is better.
And perhaps the real feeling was the reaction to this absence. And the way of knowing it had happened before, but that
Or was it and that?
And that it had not been such a worry.
I think I'm losing feeling in my..
How do you finish?

I think I'm...

I think I'm heartless

[Mia Keystone]

End of the Line

I arrived at platform five with exactly one minute to spare, and could only think how I could have used that minute better. A child was screaming, red faced and wet cheeked as it (for the bowl haircut left it's gender undeterminable) tried to swipe the headphones from it's well manicured mother. She seemed to be the only one capable of ignoring the shrieking urchin. A fellow passenger met my eyes as we shared a 'kids eh?' eye roll.

That was as close to a friend as you could make of a stranger so I sat next to her on the dirty-brown bench. "I'm never having kids," I offered.

"Yeah," she agreed. Her voice was low, a little hoarse. The flat planes of her face suggested Asian, or even Native American origin, but the brown lights in her hair contradicted that hypothesis.

"I mean," I added, hoping to fill the minute, maybe even secure a conversation for the journey, "they're ok until they can talk."

"Don't like talking?" She asked. There was a lift in a thick eyebrow, to remind me that I clearly liked talking enough to speak to her.

"People just think it's cute when babies cry," I explain. "At that age, everyone just thinks she's a crap mother."

She went quiet and I thought I might have offended her. It felt strange and I looked at the clock, wishing the train into being.

"You getting the next one?" she asked after a handful of heartbeats.

"Yeah, the two forty one. You?"

She gave a short laugh. Just a single ha. Being given no other information, I again tried to fill the silence.

"I ride it to work. It's only a few stops. I could walk it, maybe. But," I shrugged; it was visibly clear I was no athlete, "You know, always hard to muster the effort. What station do you ride to?"

"Right to the end." She said.

"Fair enough," I said. "Long ride?"

"Not really." She smiled, showing white, but slightly crooked teeth.

It had been more than a minute.

"Hope it's not late. I can't afford to be late to work again."

"It doesn't matter so much for me," she said.

Two minutes late, now. I had been exaggerating to make conversation but it would be inconvenient if the delay was much more than ten minutes. "So, you've got the day off?" I try again.

"I'm not employed." Her tone made asking questions impossible.

"Looking for work?"

"No."

I nodded, like this was the most natural thing in the world.

A faint whistle broke the silence like glass, and I leant forward from my bench to watch where the tracks emerged from a black hole in the side of the hill.

The train emerged from the tunnel like an earthworm out of the dirt. A line of off white and red, with blind black-glass eyes that moved swiftly on it's iron path. She stood, and walked towards the edge of the platform. A tinge of anxiety niggled at my mind, like a loose tooth. She was too eager to get away from me, and it offended me for all that I had just met her.

"No need to get up. It hasn't even pulled in yet," I said.

The train was drawing nearer and nearer to the edge of the platform, and I sighed, readying myself to rise, briefcase in hand, and rejoin the rest of the world.

The train drew near the edge of the platform, and she turned to look at me once, and I noticed her eyes were grey. Then, with the grace of a dancer, she sprang down off the platform and onto the tracks as the train, in a rush of whirling screaming metal, pulled up to the platform.