If I should die today... after Mike McGee, CR Avery & Shane Koyzcan.

If I should die today, I trust my housemate to hide my sex toys from my grandmother.
I give him full permission to redistribute my lesbian erotica to a closeted queer,
with sad eyes, and a quiet smile.
May it help them learn the shape of their pleasure
and some new ways to refer to the vagina.

If I should die today, you can keep my glasses,
if you promise to look through them once in a while,
take a day off now and again, and remember to breathe.
If I should die today I give you permission buy yourself flowers for no reason.
To sing in in the shower, and steal vegetables from big supermarket brands.

If I should die today, I hope my ex-lovers speak to one another and compare love letters.
I hope they forgive me for my bad spelling.
I hope they remember the nights when we swapped dreams for kisses
when the rising sun was our own personal spotlight.
If I should die today, I hope every orgasm you ever have
feels likes a personal gift from whatever god or political figure you believe in.

If I should die today, I hope you all remember how unapologetically
fat and queer and northern and working class I was.
Should you ever forget please please check my tumblr.
If I should die today, take a memory each from my memory jar.
Plant it in your pocket, grow your own happiness,
dance to LCD Soundsystem.

If I should die today, I know I'd want to be remembered as
flawed and fabulous.
So there are some things you should know.
I never really stopped thinking of Pluto as a planet.
Sometimes I was too tired to listen to you, so I just nodded.
If I should die today, remember that I would never lose an argument.
I'd just lose people.

Remember there were times when I drank too much and cried on buses,
times when I gave crumbs instead of talk to people sitting on pavements.
Times when I watched nurse Jackie rather than reading.
If I should die today, in the last seconds before I pass,
I'll be pissed off for not knowing how the novel I'm reading ends.

If I should die today, there's a story I wrote called Sirens.
It says everything I couldn't.
If I should die today, please don't stop writing letters to me.
If I should die today there's no special wisdom I can impart
no beautiful metaphor I can create
no staggering philosophy.

If I should die today, please mix my ashes with glitter,
throw them at homophobes, and tories and

anyone else who ever acts like your existence is worth less than the organic hand soap at their children's private school.

There are no words I can write in my living room at five past nine on a Tuesday night that will ever describe your worth.

But you are doing just fine. 

If I should die today, please wear fancy dress to my funeral.

Please remember not to pray for me, 

not to name a star after me 

or justify bad decisions with 'that's what she would have wanted'. 

I will only ever want beautiful things for you. 

(This includes revolution.)

If I should die today plant a tree in your garden for me, 

call it hope, 

teach yourself how it comes back to life every spring.

19

I have lived in 19 houses.

Left each one of them with bin bags.

Every one holds an era, peers into my face like a concerned teacher on days when my feet are itchy. 

For instance- Number 6 is Grandma’s cooking, mince, potatoes, Emmerdale, kids from school imitating my accent, learning to change it like shoes.

Number 8 is 90’s green walls, sick with themselves, weed smoke and coffee, tuna butties and feeling proud because Mum’s boyfriend has a car. My first nickname, Fat Pippa. 

Number 13 is endless rules, smoking and cider, being a practise test and leaving when the exam is due in nine months, from then it’s postcards and polite smiles at family functions. 

Number 5 was the worst, still plays in my mind like a line from a song I heard on the radio on days when I hear people fucking, fighting or both. This house is a massive farm, a new school my mother wearing bruises to the dinner table like her Sunday best. A bell ringing in the yard long after the phone has been ripped out the wall. 

Number 15 is generic bedroom furniture, locks on the kitchen and wearing a school uniform for a week after leaving the last place with only photographs and underwear. It is a girl who pulls out clumps of hair when her family don’t visit. 

Number 1 is near a park, is plastic tea sets and Mum, sleeping on a pull out sofa so I can have the bedroom, is matey bubble bath, but even now when playing house, there is always a break up. 

Number 16 is where Marxism becomes the only option. Is grey walls and ecstasy at the weekend, is impressing funders and income support is the local tory councillor taking publicity shots. 

Number 10 is where it all falls apart, or maybe my silence was the only thing holding it together. It is red bricks, Spanish music and wine is fuck all in the cupboards and a bloody nose for tea.

I have learnt that my goodbye’s aren’t always necessary, sometimes they get eaten with tea on the next visit. I have learnt to count passive aggressive comments like charms no longer worn around the wrist.

I am always a lodger, know how to slide next to family’s life like a Tetris piece and pretend to fit. I have learnt the three basic rules of assimilation are make yourself quiet, make yourself useful and make yourself scarce.

I can tell you the time it takes for raised voices to become raised fists, can spot an argument looming like a rain cloud in the gate of another. I know that space is power and those who take it up with noise and furniture don’t expect you to notice.

I know what it means to have your possessions tidied away like an embarrassment. I know how to take cigarettes for silence and brush my hair before the social worker comes.

I have lived in 19 houses, each standing behind me like a cross parent. Houses are like people; some of them will push you from them like an inconvenience.

I have lived in 19 houses.

I’m still looking for a home.