SNDY

Still Not Dead Yet: A Blog by Allanah Freddi

"Alive
You died with all our secrets, 

Now I carry them alone,

All these private memories.

Now I see you in my dreams.


Now I know no one can beat us, 

And what it is to be alone,

Since the day you left me. 

Tore me open at the seams.


When you fell asleep that final time, 

They turned off the sun.

How is it that the world still spins?

How can I still breathe?

How could someone die when they were mine?

What is it to love someone?

What will I do with all our sins? 

All the books on 'how to grieve.'


What will I do with all our memories? 

With all these oceans we have woven?

With what you looked like, naked, next to me?

The object of my devotion.


Some people go their whole lives without knowing love like this, 

And I wonder, do they feel alone? 

If they don’t know what they don’t know,

Until you’ve known a loneliness like this, 

Of having been so deeply known, and then alone.


Your big, pale, clammy hands upon my breasts, 

The way you’d look at me. 

The girl I was reflected in your eyes.


And what you tried to hide, your eyes confessed,

How you devoured me.

The truth that rang louder than all our lies. 


If you're no longer here to keep me up at night,

To notice if I'm sad or drunk or high,

To make sure I don't forget that I'm alive.


How am I to know that I'm alive?

No one to mind if I am sad or drunk or high,

What is one to do, except to write?


I will stay up all night and I will write,

About the man I loathed and loved so much who died,

About the times we shared when we were still alive.


People will read my work and think that I am wise,

But I am just a girl who loved a man who died,

Just waiting out each day that I've survived."

All of the content on this blog is my original work.

"Naked and Alone 

It has been 606 days without you now, 
That’s two christmases and almost two birthdays. 
And I’m living and working and breathing somehow, 
Now I wake in the mornings not dreading each day. 

I’ve grown and I’m ageing and changing a lot, 
Now it seems you’ve been gone for a lifetime. 
I’m graduating, and painting, and these days I've got 
Some worthwhile things filling my time. 

A photo of us hangs above my bed, 
Ever present in my heart and my mind, 
And I’m still not dating anyone new yet, 
Someone like you will be so hard to find. 

And I miss how we argued and how much you cared, 
And how much I cared in return, 
And the crazy depth of the connection we shared, 
How fiercely our love would burn. 

I miss how you got me like no one else did, 
How we exchanged thoughts with our eyes, 
All the shared secrets that you and I hid, 
How you’d beg to be between my thighs. 

I miss how you knew how to make me blow up, 
No one else has known me so well. 
How out of the blue, you would just call me up, 
then be on the porch, ringing my doorbell. 

How once we were alone together once more, 
We would always be back in that place, 
Where no matter how much we would argue and war, 
I’d drop everything to see your face. 

An unspoken agreement existed between us, 
That nothing would keep us apart. 
No matter how careless and brutal and reckless, 
We were with each other’s hearts. 

Grief looked good on me though, thankfully, 
Starving and dead behind the eyes. 
For a long while I felt an impenetrable apathy, 
That no one could break through, although many tried. 

The poor men who met me just after you died, 
They would tell me how I was so beautiful, 
And I would get mad and I didn’t know why, 
Suddenly it all just seemed so juvenile. 

But I sat on my floor for a year and I cried, 
And I dressed in all black, for my lover had died. 
I stopped minding at all if I lived or I died, 
I bathed in the dull numbness that benzos supplied. 

But in time and with patience and friends by my side, 
I thought, well while I am living, I should be alive. 
So I started to eat and I started to write, 
And somehow I found a new way to survive. 

I still feel you here when I’m up late at night, 
Naked and alone and somehow still alive. 
You’ll open the wardrobe or mess with the lights 
And somehow it gives me the strength to survive."

"I Want To Go To Paris, Alone.

I want to go to Paris, alone. And stay in an apartment that is fancy and modern and a bit too small but the size will make it cosy. If it were any bigger, it wouldn’t be so cosy. 

I want to dine out alone every night and eat pasta and drink wine and vape weed in fancy restaurants and get away with it. I want to hear the familiar calls of European men shamelessly leering at my beauty as I walk down the streets, the way only men in Europe do. Being leered at anywhere else feels unwanted and offensive, but in Europe it’s somehow done so boldly that it’s charming. Non-threatening, flattering. 

I want to go on runs through the beautiful paved streets of Paris, wearing cute matching sets, and think ‘I am a girl jogging through Paris.’ I want to walk through the art galleries and enjoy traveling without having to consider anybody else. I’ll enjoy flirting with everyone, but not actually sleeping with anyone. I will feel just barely safe everywhere I go, but that will be safe enough for me. This time I won’t be afraid and people will sense that and they’ll think I’m naive and I’ll let them think that. 

I want to find a bar in a hidden side street and know that I’m definitely lost, but not care. I’ll find a single man drinking alone and listen to stories of his life and feel like he wants to fuck me but he wouldn't dare to actually try. Because he’ll notice that I’m too sober and I’m smart and he’ll feel scared and I’ll register that. He will be harmless and only slightly pathetic, racist and sexist but only from age and ignorance. 

He will tell me a story and I will hear where he’s lying to me and himself, and quietly decide where the truth probably lies. I’ll pretend to believe him. I’ll wonder if this man has been telling this version for so long that he really believes that he never beat his wife. He will appreciate that I am not going to make this too difficult. Why would I bother. 

Maybe I will teach him something about transgender rights, when he tries to judge how safe I am to talk to frankly, and I’ll say something honest and point out that he’s being an idiot. And I’ll know that I could say anything to this man and he’ll choose to receive it as a mildly flirtatious and charming. He’ll tell me that it all just confuses him, and he’ll mean that it really just scares him. But, he will admit that whatever I said is hard to disagree with. Maybe I’ll open his mind. 

I want to spend money with a blatant disregard for how much I am spending. Only because I don’t how to travel any smarter, and I know that money isn’t real. I will film self-indulgent videos of my trip to Paris. And the videos will paint the illusion that I have everything. But all I will really have is a camera and somehow, always just enough money. 

I will not work a day but I will always, somehow find the money. Luckily, enough people love me that I will never go hungry, or sleep on the streets. I will walk for hours just getting lost and found and know that, for now, I have no responsibilities. I’ll enjoy flirting with the real danger of traveling alone in Europe. 

I want to spend whole days getting ready to go clubbing and get special treatment because I’m pretty. No one needs to know me at all, and no one even tries. These people are not the people who will hear my stories or know my soul. I enjoy the clarity of that knowledge. I hardly speak a word and I listen to so many stranger’s deepest secrets. I will make the most of this shallow, easy, pretend version of life that these people are doing. 

I’ll stay home and dance when I want to stay home and dance, and I’ll go out and party when I want to go out and party. 

No one here will care or know if I don’t eat or sleep, no one will ask me how high or how drunk I am or what time I got in. 

No one will care if I do something dangerous and wildly irresponsible. I’ll appreciate that these people love me for how I look, and enjoy the silent agreement that I don’t need to talk at all. And I never would, not to these people. 

One day I will meet a real person, and they will think to ask me questions about myself. Not questions about the size of my tits or if my lips are real. Questions about what I feel and think and believe. And I will tell them everything, and we will laugh at how easily these crazy people told me all of their secrets. And I didn’t have to tell them so much as my middle name. And they didn’t even think to ask. 

And I will throw my head back and laugh at how easy it was for me to move through the world for so long without needing to surrender even one real part of my soul. For now, I enjoy being here as the decor. I know that this isn’t real life. And I’ll roll my eyes and sigh and feel bored and impatient with how wrapped up people are in their lives. 

I will continue so patiently waiting until the day the real boy comes along to finally take me to real life. 

For now, I am just a ghost sneaking through Paris, high on the knowledge that I know everyone's secrets, and no one knows any of mine."

“Cydnii

You are the unending pit of chaos,

She'll go stumbling down. 

You are king Meneleus,

Messing Helen around.

And though you have long forgotten, 

She will wait for you.

And she’ll stay up til sunrise, 

Alone with the moon. 

Then she’ll not speak a word of it, 

Never complain,

And you will do it to her all over again.

She will sit for hours waiting for you to care,  

Smoking and cleaning and feeding your dog.

And you will not notice she braided her hair, 

Overlook all the details through thick, heavy fog. 

She’ll laugh at your jokes and she’ll lick all your wounds, 

And you don’t even know her mum’s name.

One day she will escape you, not a moment too soon,

And you’ll think of her in a new way.

In the harsh light of day no one else will compare,

You’ll know now that you never deserved her. 

Then you’ll spend your days wishing that she was still there, 

And you’ll think of how badly you hurt her.

And though you may distract yourself with other girls,

They’ll be only in love with themselves. 

And you'll think of the one girl who gave you the world, 

And how you put her through hell. "

"Your Essence

When you died you took:
The beat of the music 
My plans
and
My heart
Thank you for the tragedy
I need it for my art.
Thank you for loving me
And for always seeing us through.

Every single part of me 
Was built from parts of you.
I woke, you slept, I slept, you died.
I woke up to a world where you were not alive. 
Where I had to carry on without you by my side.
I wrote, I sang, I broke, I cried.
I dreamt about you every night
The first six months after you died.
You were the greatest part of being alive.
Maybe we’d end up together in another life. 

On another timeline, 
There we are, you and I.
Still fucking and bickering into the night.
And surely taking for granted 
That I am yours,
And you are mine.

You and I existed in another world,
In a different time.
Where the sun still shines
And we all still try.
A time where we are still alive.
What I would give for one more fight. 

I miss your individual segments, 
Your spirit, and your essence. 
I miss your big cold hands on my naked flesh.
How we ran through one another’s heads.
And how you’d always choose me in the end.""Your Essence
When you died you took:
The beat of the music 
My plans
and
My heart
Thank you for the tragedy
I need it for my art.
Thank you for loving me
And for always seeing us through.

Every single part of me 
Was built from parts of you.
I woke, you slept, I slept, you died.
I woke up to a world where you were not alive. 
Where I had to carry on without you by my side.
I wrote, I sang, I broke, I cried.
I dreamt about you every night
The first six months after you died.
You were the greatest part of being alive.
Maybe we’d end up together in another life. 

On another timeline, 
There we are, you and I.
Still fucking and bickering into the night.
And surely taking for granted 
That I am yours,
And you are mine.

You and I existed in another world,
In a different time.
Where the sun still shines
And we all still try.
A time where we are still alive.
What I would give for one more fight. 

I miss your individual segments, 
Your spirit, and your essence. 
I miss your big cold hands on my naked flesh.
How we ran through one another’s heads.
And how you’d always choose me in the end."

“Closure

Closure,

there’s no closure,
for your dad has sat for hours at his bright computer monitor.
Focus, try to focus, he says under his breath,
But none of us can focus since you’ve been dead.

Your mother, blonde and willowy,
the sea has been a friend to her.

And torquay waves splash
And crash
Through the bewildered sobbing through which I have gotten to know her.

It’s 4am and I just lied about the time that I will write
Because the night’s gates open up at 10.
But none of us can sleep now that you’re dead.

Okay then, it’s 1am,
but if I said that you’d not get the picture I just painted,
Because there are endless hours left of night,
Now that nothing matters, now that you’re dead.

One time I woke up at my brother’s
A sleeping bag as a bed,
And he murmured as he bustled past the kitchen,
‘What time is it?” I asked
‘Does it matter?”
He’d said.

I suppose not then. Now that nothing matters. Now that you’re dead.

I made a playlist, and called it My Lover is Dead.
It goes for just eight hours.

Now I’m up doing yoga flows at 2am,
trying to care about what We Built.

It’s been hard to feel a thing,
Since the nights have been so still.”

“December

December brings hard feelings,

memories of you,

thoughts of you also laying awake on the other side of the moon.

The big wave Brought you,
Or shall I reference other poets,
Others who have known it, to lose a lover.

Words, any words, no words could ever fill
the emptiness that opened up in my chest,
Cavernous.
The day we lost you.

No words, but your big beautiful blue eyes,
Eyes that I’ve spent so long understanding were my portal to the moon.

Your voice, your words,
your kiss is to me the answer to a question
I’ve been yet afraid of asking.

How blasphemous the thought is,
For my lips to kiss another’s kiss.”

"The following is a poem by Carolyn Biram:

He says he’s done. Tom. 

He’s home. It’s been three weeks. He’s Skinny. Sad. Bruised. Dazed. And Dirty. 
He says he’s done. 

It’s his birthday tomorrow. He’s turning 24. He has nothing. No high school certificate. No uni degree. No girlfriend. No travel stories. No job. No money. No happiness. 
But He says he’s done. 

I hug him. I feed him. I hydrate him. 

I say a quiet thank you and breathe a sigh of relief secretly praying this is the last time. He’s home and He says his done. 

I secretly plan tomorrow. 

A call to the rehab unit. 
Breakfast. 
Coffee. 
A chat. 
A hug. 
Maybe a smile and laugh. 
A glimmer of hope and light in out of the darkness 
Because He says he’s done."

- By Carolyn Biram