HLR
Teen Aesthete
approaching our thirties, we noticed that our bedrooms still look
the same as they did when we were teens. will we ever give up
on twinkly plastic fairy lights twisted around a bed frame?
dinner candles ceremoniously shoved into the spouts of fancy-looking wine bottles
and litre smirnoffs, us gals busy playing adults. plastic ears belonging to small animals
attached to headbands, the bunny, the mouse, the kitten, those sexy-saccharine survivors
of crazy halloweens that now we feel to be obscene yet keep on display anyway. bureaus
perpetually trashed with a mass of make-up brushes, cracked shadow palettes, bronzer
crumbs treaded into the carpet, lipstick smudges and empty perfume bottles, no scent
left to sniff, just dust and nostalgia and missing lids. faded polaroids blu-tacked to walls,
postcards and cinema tickets and concert stubs and decades-old birthday cards. I still have
the same scallop-edged mirror (the main feature of my room when we were schoolgirls,
hours spent poring over our pores) with the same purple rosary artfully draped across
its face, a face that today throws back an image of someone older-but-surely-wiser-
surely-after-everything-you’ve-been-through (but no, I still make all the same mistakes).
all those trinkets amassed during summer trips and outlandish bucket lists scrawled in neon
glitter pens. and somewhere, tucked away in a wardrobe, a tiny polo shirt emblazoned
with the marker-penned names and well-wishes of our feels-like-it-was-a-lifetime-ago
classmates (it was), the majority of whom we have absolutely definitely forgotten,
some of whom are dead and buried now. george in the car crash smash. izzy gone
from an accidental o.d. the first time she tried ketamine. tariq stabbed to death
in a row over twenty quid. simone the preventable suicide. ali who went to sleep
aged twenty-three and never woke up. marianna the decapitated passenger
of the peugeot speeding on the motorway rushing home to her baby daughter.
and danny hanging from the rafters after losing too much money on the horses.
is this why we hang on to so much trash, trappings salvaged from hazy schooldays,
dusty knick-knacks, all the tat and needless crap that we simply can’t throw away?
because we’re scared of ending up like that? it’s as if we need evidence
to confirm that we’ve made and retained so many precious memories,
as if we need proof that we are living, have lived, will live forever…
hey, girls? we’re going to need more candles dripping wax over more green bottles.
we need more nights out, more halloweens, more hangovers, more blurry photos.
we’ll need endless strings of fairy lights. we’re going to need more life.
the same as they did when we were teens. will we ever give up
on twinkly plastic fairy lights twisted around a bed frame?
dinner candles ceremoniously shoved into the spouts of fancy-looking wine bottles
and litre smirnoffs, us gals busy playing adults. plastic ears belonging to small animals
attached to headbands, the bunny, the mouse, the kitten, those sexy-saccharine survivors
of crazy halloweens that now we feel to be obscene yet keep on display anyway. bureaus
perpetually trashed with a mass of make-up brushes, cracked shadow palettes, bronzer
crumbs treaded into the carpet, lipstick smudges and empty perfume bottles, no scent
left to sniff, just dust and nostalgia and missing lids. faded polaroids blu-tacked to walls,
postcards and cinema tickets and concert stubs and decades-old birthday cards. I still have
the same scallop-edged mirror (the main feature of my room when we were schoolgirls,
hours spent poring over our pores) with the same purple rosary artfully draped across
its face, a face that today throws back an image of someone older-but-surely-wiser-
surely-after-everything-you’ve-been-through (but no, I still make all the same mistakes).
all those trinkets amassed during summer trips and outlandish bucket lists scrawled in neon
glitter pens. and somewhere, tucked away in a wardrobe, a tiny polo shirt emblazoned
with the marker-penned names and well-wishes of our feels-like-it-was-a-lifetime-ago
classmates (it was), the majority of whom we have absolutely definitely forgotten,
some of whom are dead and buried now. george in the car crash smash. izzy gone
from an accidental o.d. the first time she tried ketamine. tariq stabbed to death
in a row over twenty quid. simone the preventable suicide. ali who went to sleep
aged twenty-three and never woke up. marianna the decapitated passenger
of the peugeot speeding on the motorway rushing home to her baby daughter.
and danny hanging from the rafters after losing too much money on the horses.
is this why we hang on to so much trash, trappings salvaged from hazy schooldays,
dusty knick-knacks, all the tat and needless crap that we simply can’t throw away?
because we’re scared of ending up like that? it’s as if we need evidence
to confirm that we’ve made and retained so many precious memories,
as if we need proof that we are living, have lived, will live forever…
hey, girls? we’re going to need more candles dripping wax over more green bottles.
we need more nights out, more halloweens, more hangovers, more blurry photos.
we’ll need endless strings of fairy lights. we’re going to need more life.
Biography
HLR (she/her) is a prize-winning poet, working-class writer, and professional editor from North London. She is a commended winner of The Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition 2021, and she also won The Desmond O'Grady International Poetry Competition 2021. She is the author of poetry collection History of Present Complaint (Close to the Bone) and micro-chapbook Portrait of the Poet as a Hot Mess (Ghost City Press). Find her on Twitter: @HLRwriter. Read more at: treacleheart.com
