Tactile Learner
Issy Hall
‘Sorry, I would like to add to this story’. My table neighbour props their elbow on the back of my chair to lean past, look right through me. Even the walls have heard this one before, echoing the shouts over to a friend that details are being missed out. I am impatient drunk company. Thoughts on loop, a fresh ladder scuffed through my tights, the stillness of Indoors makes me come undone. Outside, silverlight lets the earthly greens look ghostly. The ceiling gushes that it has known me since I was ‘this’ high. Count on a skyline to reveal true self within. Pictures of the past upright in the air. To receive a letter, marked with my name, address of my birthplace, right into my hands, that’s something so certain. Here in this pub, I dip my fingers into candles. Later, I will walk over memories no one has walked, and the waxy fingerprint and text from a friend checking I’m in safe will be the earthly proof I was there. But a city never needs proof. It gave me the kiss when I was delivered. One scraped knee from a fall and now my blood is in the gravel. One pissing accident in a neighbour’s garden and the territory marked from a young age. You know why I’m like this. Tactile and sensitive. Every time a feeling forms I must touch it.
