I see you. I see you from the grime stained window of the bus that takes me back to the place you won’t go. I see your expensive leisure sportswear, made to look casual and costs more than I live off in a fortnight. I see the stores that line the street, every second shop a fucking hairdresser. Every third a café or bar or restaurant with some fancy name that rolls off the tongue like venom. The conversations burning through concrete in the righteous piety of the well to do aristocrats. I see you and I don’t see myself. I don’t see the days I carried a screwdriver in-case I was mugged. I don’t see the crime. I don’t see the oh so dreaded welfare lines.
But I want to.
I carry the weight of cheap fried food and a distaste for vegetables. Well what do you expect? They were always microwaved, soggy, limp, tasteless, frozen things. Have you tried to buy fresh vegetables? They are fucking expensive.
Leave the onions and potatoes to us, and I’m sick of hearing about fucking avocados.
I don’t hate you, well maybe I do, but I don’t want to. If anything, it’s an immature jealousy. An ugly boys stare at the handsome man plastered on the side of a bus. Do you think if I bought that pair of underwear I’d look that good? Do you think if I had that designer dog I’d feel that good? Do you think if I lived on that street, I’d feel any different?
Maybe that’s where this animosity, this bubbling of acidic champagne, comes from. Maybe I’m just disappointed in myself.
Maybe I see you, and I see me.
Words by Simon Telford
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