I have this recurring dream, nightmare even, that I’m on a rollercoaster but the overhead restraint won’t buckle.


I never get hurt, I never fall out- instead,

I hold on really really tight, (impossibly tight

considering how fast it would be going),

and somehow, every time, I’m fine.

I think about what it means a lot,

and never come to a conclusion.


Maybe there’s some sort of hidden meaning?

They say that every face you see

in your dreams is someone that you’ve seen before.

The people beside me are always familiar, though fleeting;

maybe we’ve passed in the street,

shared the same sky before for more than just this moment.

They’re safely strapped in, never tentative,

and always pressing their hand on mine

as I cling to the top of the seat above me.


It starts up again, slowly, slowly.

I’m never not convinced I’m going to fall out and hurtle through the air to my death.

I hold my breath and wait for the drop.


It passes in a blur but it’s real,

it’s so real I taste it, the air and my lungs fighting

a losing battle through a scream.

My life undoes before my eyes, and I see my mother’s face.

I see my best friends, and the blue

football sheds, and the time we were drinking in the river and I cut my leg.

I’ve got a tattoo over the scar now,

of a magician’s assistant doing that trick

where they separate you in a box.

I think about how ironic it is that I’m just about to end up in one, it’s almost funny, how on a normal day I’d definitely have some stupid remark to make about it, you know, if I wasn’t about to fall to my death.


I close my eyes as we loop the loop,

holding on so tight my nails dig

into the soft hand of whoever’s beside me.


I see it again. My first kiss. All the more important kisses after it.

All the times I pretended to be a ballerina as a kid,

pirouetted around the living room.

A bottle of lemonade that I knocked over a

scrabble board on a long awaited first holiday with my friends.

Having my hair dyed fuchsia by the most loving hands.

Swimming in the Croatian sea.

The time I ran into the therapist I had

when I was fifteen years later on the train,

and she hugged me and told me she was proud of me.

Taking a cigarette out of my mum’s hand as she passes out.

The matching tattoo I have with my youngest sibling.


I open my eyes again, and I’m here.

Despite everything, I’m here.