I'm Alive - SOAK, Gemma Doherty

Was already opening a window before the action registered

Clearing my throat, I shook autopilot from my shoulders

And welcomed fresh air to spill into my head like the first drag of a menthol

cigarette

It’s been a while since I heard my own voice

Whirling it’s way through the cogs and cobwebs of my abandoned sense of self

It was a catalyst turning keys in the ignition of my first car

I swear the air came looking for me

Or I for it, subconsciously

It douses like a rainy late night drive

Where the stop signs are dripping red velvet icing into

Puddled reflections

Irish hail gripping cars like a one night stand

Lipstick smudging with every wiper swiped

Nostalgia lives up to the hype

And It makes me feel okay

Perplexed, it paralyses like a surprise embrace

I just stand there stoned and laughing with a stupid look on my face

I grant myself permission to wake up

I tug the blue bread from my ears

And hold hands with my depression

Acting like a transplant patient testing out new eyes

Looking at life as if it were the first time

It’s hard to believe the scene

I’m wide eyed by the window

In awe at the wonder of simply being

Clouds paint temporary arts on the worlds ceiling

And my one bed apartment feels like a coliseum

For a moment I can exhale every mistake I’ve ever made

To create space for lessons I’ve not learnt yet

Sugar rushes like a high to soak up the bitterness in me

At full lung capacity, I feel pretty

But in a handsome way

When she comes home from work I assume the lenses are faulty

I’d forgotten the effect her presence has on me

A tempestuous tidal wave manifests in her mouth just before she says that she

loves me

And I’m one sorry motherfucker to have to have ever doubted so

I’m alive and I can feel it

I sit with the night in appreciation of my own creation

Of weeds growing on the street adjacent

Of this ability to hear a world in operation

I’m alive and I can feel it

When the song Tinseltown by the Blue Nile comes on

When something sits right on my stubborn body type

When she doesn’t know the words but still sings along

I’m alive and I can feel it

In a hesitant goodbye on a phone call from back home

In the healing of the ozone layer

In the first crunch of Tayto cheese and onion after months of being deprived

I’m alive and I won’t take it for-granted

When my guitar fulfils a pipe dream

When my culinary attempts don’t taste like bin juice

When her naked interpretive dance is accidentally profound

I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive