NaPoWriMo 2025 – Day 30: Coldplay found me first

Posted on by Jane

I wasn’t looking for music.

I was looking for signs.

That I hadn’t vanished. That my body still belonged to me.

That my mind – rattled and frayed – might come back.

Eventually.

It was 2000.

Millennium fever had already soured.

Everyone was busy pretending to be excited.

And I was hiding.

Not a fun, flirty game of hide and seek.

Hiding-hiding.

From a man who grinned with knives in his mouth

and spoke like God on Sundays

and Satan the rest of the week.

I’d left with almost nothing.

Some clothes. A toothbrush.

A phone I never turned on.

And a CD Walkman I’d nicked from a box of things he didn’t value.

I didn’t even know the disc inside.

It started quiet.

Look at the stars…

and I thought,

not now.

I didn’t want beauty.

I didn’t trust it.

But the voice –

something about that voice –

it didn’t ask me to believe.

It just was.

Calm. Clear. Slightly sad.

Not a hero. Not a villain.

Just a witness.

Yellow bled into Shiver bled into Spies

and I sat on the thin mattress of the safe house

not knowing if I was still in my own skin

and let it all happen.

Coldplay didn’t make me brave.

They didn’t throw open the door.

They didn’t punch him.

Or scream for justice.

But they stayed.

In the background.

In the silence between panic attacks.

In the cracks.

The same way moss grows on bomb sites.

I found my breath again to Trouble.

Learned how to walk outside again with Don’t Panic.

And when The Scientist came, years later –

oh God –

I held the steering wheel and sobbed

because it knew.

All of it.

Now,

decades on,

I still can’t listen to Fix You without pausing.

Without closing my eyes.

Without remembering how I fixed myself

one heartbeat at a time.

People roll their eyes at Coldplay.

Call them safe. Bland. Commercial.

I let them.

They weren’t in the room.

They don’t know

what it means

to have a lifeline wrapped in melody,

to be held by sound

when nothing else is holding you.

Coldplay didn’t save me.

But they didn’t leave me either.

And in a world full of exits,

they were

one quiet entrance

back to myself.

All my love,

Jane

NaPoWriMo 2025 – Day 29: Stevie Nicks vs. The Roomba

Posted on by Jane

It starts small –

a hum in the corner of the room,

a little mechanical sigh,

as the Roomba stirs to life.

Stevie, all in flowing black chiffon,

is mid-spin,

singing to a crystal she found behind the sofa,

when she catches it out of the corner of her kohl-rimmed eye –

a plastic demon, creeping across the floor like a mutinous turtle.

At first, she thinks it’s a spirit.

(She did light sandalwood earlier. Things happen.)

She circles it warily, shawls flaring,

as it bumps against a chair leg with all the menace of a sleepy cat.

“Be gone,” she hisses,

waving a bundle of dried sage at it,

but the Roomba, impervious to purification,

keeps trundling forward,

whirring like the ghost of bad decisions.

It eats a corner of her scarf.

It tangles itself in the hem of her skirt.

It tries, it seems, to devour her essence.

Stevie shrieks –

a high, wild sound that probably shatters glass in three counties –

and leaps onto the nearest armchair,

declaring, in a voice that would make gods weep,

“I WILL NOT BE CONSUMED BY TECHNOLOGY.”

The Roomba pauses,

confused,

backs away slowly,

as if realising it has picked a fight with

an ancient, unstoppable witch queen

of velvet and chaos.

Later, her manager finds her barefoot in the kitchen,

feeding it bits of amethyst

and whispering,

“Maybe you’re just misunderstood.”

NaPoWriMo 2025 – Day 28: the hymn was out of tune

Posted on by Jane

someone’s aunt pressed the wrong notes
on a plastic organ – one of those
that still smells of Sunday school and sweaty hands.
the congregation, bless them,
still sang like it mattered,
all cracked and glorious.

I sat by the exit
where the pew groaned louder than my grief,
where you could pretend the creaks were holy.

outside, a kid dropped a coke can
and it rolled like a drum solo into the car park.
someone’s ringtone went off… Beyoncé.
no one even flinched.
we’re used to ghosts showing up
in the wrong costumes.

at the end, they played your favourite.
that terrible rock ballad you’d hum when you thought no one was listening.
the cheap speakers couldn’t handle it.
the sound broke and wept and warped,
same as we did.
perfect.

NaPoWriMo 2025 – Day 27: The Garden of Earthly Delights

Posted on by Jane
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“The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch

Pleasure has always carried the seeds of its own ruin.

Look
in the centre of the painting, they are laughing,
spilling fruit down their bare chests,
riding swans like drunken cavalry,
slipping between petals and bubbles and
unruly hands.

It is the hour before the fall,
where even the air tastes like sugar,
and nobody, nobody,
is thinking about tomorrow.

A man stuffs cherries into a woman’s mouth;
a woman rides a giant fish straight into absurdity;
someone is kissing a flower with more reverence than God Himself ever got.

And somewhere, just past the margins of this pink-flesh carnival,
the cracks are already forming.
Someone has broken their fingernail and barely noticed.
Someone is bleeding a little into the river.
Someone laughs too loudly, tipping over into hunger.

Pleasure always imagines itself eternal.
It never is.

In the distant right-hand panel,
where no one is looking yet,
the sky is black,
the water is poisoned,
and the mouths that once kissed are now howling open
for something they can’t name and will never find again.

But for now,
oh, for now,
they drink,
and dance,
and fall into each other
like they have all the time in the world.

NaPoWriMo 2025 – Day 26: What the morning knows

Posted on by Jane

The morning hums before the sparrows call,

a secret tune it cradles in its hands.

It brushes past the windows, down the wall,

it stirs the dust and tugs the dreaming lands.

 

It smells of bread, of rain, of broken sleep,

it tastes of every word you meant to say.

It weaves the promises you meant to keep,

then tucks them in your pocket for the day.

 

The morning knows the silence of your fear,

the way you turn your face against the light.

It knows the dreams you bury, year by year,

it holds them still, it keeps them out of sight.

 

And when you lift your head, when you begin,

the morning hums its song beneath your skin.

NaPoWriMo 2025 – Day 25: Hong Kong, 1985

Posted on by Jane

I wanted it to be everything,
the night wrapped in neon and sweat,
George and Andrew and me,
me, floating on a teenage dream
stitched together with cassette tape and hope.

They came on late.
Left early.
Changed outfits like it mattered.
And somewhere between Wake Me Up and the big dramatic farewell,
I felt something strange –
like someone had pulled the shiny wrapper off the sweet
and left me holding just the foil.

They said they were the first.
They weren’t.
We were first,
before the bright white smiles,
before the glossy magazine covers
told everyone it was Wham!
who broke the seal.

We stood under that heavy Chinese sky,
guitars slung too low,
knees knocking a little,
but still —
there.

They screamed for us.
Proper screamed.
Even if they didn’t know who the hell we were.
Even if the posters just said foreign band
and the amps smelled like burnt toast.

We played our hearts out into the thick air,
sweat sticking our hair to our foreheads,
grins stitched across our faces
like we had a secret nobody else knew.

That night at Wham!,
I learned something better than how to scream in pitch.
I learned that sometimes you meet your heroes
and realise
you’re already the better story.

NaPoWriMo 2025 – Day 24: Reverb

Posted on by Jane

Well, would you look at that…
forty years gone in the blink of a broken string,
and here we are again:
tuning hearts not just guitars.

We once roared out of sticky-floored basements
with nothing but amps, hormones, and dreams
half-formed and over-loud.
Now we’re flying in from every compass point:
from neon-lit Hong Kong nights,
to Berlin’s warehouse echoes,
London’s heartbeat,
Oxford’s damp poetry,
Devon’s green hush,
Cornwall’s sea-soaked sigh:
each of us bringing weather and memory
in our carry-ons.

We’re not here to chase youth (she’s gone, love;
took her eyeliner and ran off with someone in IT),
we’re here for something richer,
for the callus memory in our fingers,
the way we still harmonise
without needing to look.

You strum a G,
and I’m 17 again,
feeling Fix You crawl into my bones
before Coldplay even existed.
Funny how some songs come through you
before they’re ever written.

The drums come in late (as always),
but we laugh – because time never was your strong suit,
and we never needed perfect.
We needed true.
We needed loud.
We needed together.

So we plug in,
not to impress,
but to remember.
Not to relive,
but to relove.
And the music we make?
It’s got crow’s feet and mortgage payments,
but it moves.

You sing that old refrain…
“Hey Jane! I’m falling back again”…
and suddenly
we’re not just back.
We’re forward.

In every echo,
we find each other again.

NaPoWriMo 2025 – Day 23: Song of the Gull (in 5 notes)

Posted on by Jane

SKRAAAH: the overture.
A bold declaration from the rooftops
above Looe’s chip shops.
Not a call to mate…
a call to arms.

SKREEEE: the solo.
He’s seen you.
You, with your paper-wrapped tribute,
held high like an offering to Neptune.
You fool.

SKRAH-AH-AHH: the descent.
Wings slice saltwind,
and the music builds.
A crescendo of flapping and audacity.

snatch: silence.
The chip is gone.
You are left
with only the echo
of a triumph that was never yours.

SKRARRRHHH!: the encore.
From the lamppost now,
he sings to his cousins
a hymn of conquest
in the key of vinegar.

And you,
chipless,
stare up
and slow… clap…

NaPoWriMo 2025 – Day 22: I built this

Posted on by Jane

It started with a few bits of paper

I printed off the internet

when the internet sounded like a fax machine

and took ten minutes to load a recipe.

They said things like <html> and <body>

like it was some kind of spell.

I didn’t understand it,

but I liked the shape of it –

angled brackets like tiny doors.

No course.

No mentor.

No idea.

Just me,

a Word doc full of pasted code,

a CRT monitor buzzing like a wasp,

and the dog sighing at my feet.

I broke things

boldly.

Wrote page after page with nothing on it

but “Hello world”

and a gif of a dancing baby

(because it was 2000

and you had to).

I didn’t know what I was doing,

but I knew when it worked.

When a border appeared.

When a link turned blue.

When I wrote a line

and it stayed

exactly where I wanted it.

Magic.

I built pages like dens –

hidden corners of the web

for no one but me.

I made buttons that didn’t go anywhere

and navigation menus with no destination.

But I loved them.

And I kept going.

I didn’t mean to become a web designer.

It crept up on me.

One fix, one client, one “could you just…”

at a time.

Now look.

I know my way around divs like I know my own kitchen.

I can spot an unclosed bracket in my sleep.

I build sites that work.

That welcome.

That hum quietly behind the scenes,

doing their job like magic you don’t have to notice.

Yet, every now and then

I still stumble across a page

and right-click –

View source –

like lighting a candle

for the girl who printed off three crumpled sheets

and taught herself how to build a world.

NaPoWriMo 2025 – Day 21: A most civilised Grand Prix

Posted on by Jane

Engines purr quietly; no need for drama
as the drivers take their places,
not so much on the grid
as in elegantly upholstered armchairs
bolted delicately into their vehicles.

The pit crew wear cravats.
Tyres are changed only after
careful consideration
and the completion of a haiku.

Helmets are polished to a high sheen,
monogrammed, of course,
and visors are tinted just enough
to preserve mystery
without obstructing one’s view
of passing cloud formations.

The race begins with the soft ring
of a silver bell.
No lights, no roar
just the low hum of courtesy
as cars ease forward at a dignified pace,
minding gaps,
signalling turns with silk handkerchiefs
fluttered through the window.

At turn three, one driver pulls over
to admire a particularly symmetrical hedge.
Another brakes to avoid a squirrel,
then exits the vehicle
to offer it a digestive biscuit.

The commentators speak in hushed tones,
discussing philosophy, tyre compounds,
and whether time is, in fact, linear.
Nobody shouts.
Nobody knows who’s leading,
and nobody minds.

At the halfway point, all drivers pause
for a full afternoon tea.
Laps are delayed to accommodate
fresh scones and debates
about Proust, porridge, and particle physics.

Back on track, one car performs a ballet pirouette
just before the chicane;
a move not sanctioned by the FIA,
but applauded nonetheless
by spectators in linen blazers
who all brought their own collapsible seating.

The chequered flag is waved
with a certain melancholic grace,
not that anyone noticed.
The winner had long since parked
to watch ducks waddle near the finish line,
his champagne swapped for elderflower cordial.

Everyone agrees it was a splendid race.
Terribly well-mannered.
Nobody crashed,
nobody swore,
and someone even rescued a lost puppy
on lap seventeen.