I truly don’t know where to start with this. On Saturday the 18th of February, I received the most devastating news. My beautiful friend Brigitte Beaney had passed away unexpectedly. The following content is ridiculously personal, vulnerable, sensitive and explicit. But these little journal entries and poems have allowed me to feel like I’ve honoured the wonderful writer that Brigitte was and IS. Grief is not a linear process. It’s messy, unconventional and incredibly lonely. So with all that melancholic bullshit, Brig, this is for you.

18/02/2023

“Im saving all my words for tomorrow xx”
“Literally same xxx”
“So we exist tonight, and see eachother tomorrow xx”
“We exist tonight, we live and love tomorrow ❤”
“I love you”
“I love you so so much Maddie”
“Never forget that ❤”
“Never ever my love 💙”

21/02/2023

i cannot feel my hands.

do not feel the ground beneath my feet
and though the sky is everywhere
my heart snags at the
thought of never floating with you again
my face is toward the
sun, but I cannot feel
its warmth
there are no tears because
there is nothing to mourn; it’s not real
You will call me in a few days,
and you will say,
“mysz, I’ve miiiisseddd youuu”
you will sing those words, and I’ll say,
“i’m sorry i haven’t called either, i’ve been checked out—”
and you’ll reply
“oh straight up homie, me too”
do not stress, my lovely
i completely understand.
I love you, Brig
I love you, Mysz

(my little Mishka, my warrior bear)

21/02/2023

and Eugenics would not have
won, that stupid card game
if you had not bundled us up that
night, watching
your gabble of cackling
geese and gassy antelopes
devouring lotus flowers
toothy grins
savoring rose–
bittersweet succulence
how did i find this clowder of lunatics?
who love so fiercely
like every coming-of-age text to exist
(ever) but the real question is
how did we find your exquisite
Soul, and why wasn’t it
sooner; so we could have had you
for longer.

22/02/2023

I have these pains in my chest.
tender to touch
grazing my sternum ribs
and like Lennie with Bailey
I wonder, if it’s
just my silly broken heart
cracking bones with each
thump thump
remind me i am alive
even though i cannot feel my hands
– because how do you feel your
way around the fog with no
nerves in your fingertips?
the soul snags the sternum patches
up the broken bloodied body
broken bloodied mind
straddling between realms
a wonderingandwandering, weary,
melancholic traveller

23/02/2023

“I would kiss Death/ If it meant I got to/ Keep you for moments/ Longer”
(Brigitte Beaney, The Lover’s Fable; 2023)

giddiness
dazed delusional darling
buying time Forever
tick tick tick
it only takes today
to realize, we were
living on borrowed time

25/02/2023

“Oh, you are so tiny,” Mel said, embracing me quickly.
“Is that why she called you little mouse?” We giggled then, at the ludicrous obviousness.
So I said, “yes, that is exactly why.”
And then we broke apart, looked away. Gazed around the living room in reminiscence. And and I hadn’t realised but you must have spoken about me a little fondly, a little regularly, for her to know your nickname for me.
And I, and well, and I have never treasured being called small in my entire life except for the moment I knew I would never hear it presently again. The way the word lingered in the air. Mysz. A little mouse curled up in the cosy cottage of your love.

02/03/2023

you should have seen us
huddled like tiny baby birds
shuffling across the pew
fragile flowers
blooming
beaming
weeping
colour on our wrists–
blue, purple, pink and sunshinepersonified
grasping hands and
suspending tears
All Hail The Queen
and her literary Reign.

02/03/2023

for a second i cracked
and nearly drowned
in my paper cup
as i looked to the
screen and found us
beaming at the camera

05/03/2023

we danced like
harlots to the beat
of a drum
in the middle of a dingy street
with no tomorrows promised
So we existed then and then only
howling and clapping
at the moons face
thinking
This is the life
This is the life
all the step ball changes and
swaying hips
Our celebration
To you
To us
the Night
strutting like a pack of wild things
We met you on the other
Side of the kings lap
and we smiled.

07/03/2023

Pristine. White. Vanilla. Clean.
But my brain is muddy
With Tales of tender morsels and little
Red capes
Pirouetting in this space
Assaulting it
And i want to call you
Because I cannot wake up
I cannot wake up
And you will never wake up
And you didn’t.
And now the world is the wrong size shoe
And there are cockroaches down my
Throat, and a grime on my skin
Which I cannot wash away

10/03/2023

i made garlic and chilli
pasta today (not from scratch)
(fresh garlic cloves makes all the difference) to feel a little closer
home
but then i made a second
bowl, and washed it down
with an overpriced chocolate
easter egg
because it’s meant to be
good for the soul
Teary-eyed spice, to heal my heart.

Journal Entry 10/03/2023

they never tell you about the “what the fuck” phenomenon when someone dies.
‘hey, so-and-so died’ what the fuck?
your mother buried you even though you wanted to be cremated– what the fuck?
they’re walking your body out of the chapel while your mother sobs. a black widow. spider.
– what the fuck.
you were buried in the cowboy boots you loved so dearly. six fucking feet underground.
physically and literally rotting. decomposing.
I can imagine them lowering you into the ground and hearing the thump of coffin-on-soil. be any more fucking gentle?
hearing your brother choke his way through your eulogy while i hold my grief like a greedy piece of shit because who the fuck is he crying? why does it take death for people to realize how privileged they were to be blessed with your life?
the young adult books don’t tell you how anticlimactic death is. how distant but niggling, but also just nothing. nobody really talks about how life just resumes. the world doesn’t stop. the sun still shines, and the bustling of work and life are still found in every dusty crevice of the city. people still cut you off in traffic. teacher’s still expect you to hand in assignments. your mum still wants you to put a load of washing on– and this all truly feels like “what. the. fuck.” Why can’t time just stop and stop. Stop. S T O P. STOP —
but even if it did and we sat in this grimy, dirty, empty space, what would it change?
they don’t teach you that grief is fluid, or that it initially isn’t bound by temporal space and time.
i once read that losing someone never gets easier, but more predictable. Spaced out enough that you can maybe catch (a quarter, or half, or full) agonizing breath before the next tidal wave.
a lot of the time the waves lap at you. in-and-out-and-in. brushing the shore. sometimes gently, often not.
sometimes it fills you right up, other times it takes more than what you can survive.
but we’re not here to talk about allegory and stupid fucking metaphors. not right now. not without you to call out the cliché and mock the lazy writing. recycling phrases and words and patterns and arrangements in my favorite Barthes fashion. I hate myself. I am not strong, or special or altruistic. I am selfish and sad and beyond fucking angry.
I think i could give Hamlet and his melancholy a run for his money right now. I think i could sell my soul just to speak with you. But i could never do it… for fear it might actually come true. because I’m selfish.
and because i’m selfish, i need you to tell me what the fuck i’m supposed to do for honours. because i’m selfish i need you to make me your garlic and chili pasta with homemade garlic bread like you said we would. because i’m selfish i need your back rubs when my uterus is stabbing me. because i’m selfish i need to devour every word you’ve ever written and bathe in their brilliance and inspiration. because i’m selfish i need to curl up on the yellow armchair while you’re on the red, and sip hot lemon water while you jump up every four seconds to show me something.
because I’m selfish I won’t let myself
feel anything beyond: what the fuck.

17/03/2023

sit in class
do not engage

i’m sure they think ‘we’re spoiled’
stuck-up
stupid
mean girls

but we do not want to be
apart a community
outside our own

wearing the burden of one less soul
hurts aches
and they will never
understand.

in their stupid, prestigious, verbose
analyses
that the one to carry the team
is not here

anguish.
ridiculously
hopelessly
irreparably lost

without her.

22/03/2023

phlegm clings to the
walls of my esophagus
metallic mucus
thick slimy I
gulp, it grows
hitching breath and
tight chest
as I gag and gag and gag
the organism remembers
the day we were
called, and we
immediately threw up
all over the front
lawn. Typing
with shaking fingers
disbelieving tears
the body ahead of consciousness
releasing the toxin ingested
when i said the words
aloud; “she’s gone”

22/03/2023

breaking fingers
and crunching dead – lines
grinding for 15%

i sat down and
felt blood dribble
out of my pussy

stared at that fucking
poster on the floor, and you
know what?

i bawled. I sunk
to the grotty kitchen
floor, and i bawled

because all i needed
in that moment
was for you to see it.

In Loving Memory,

Brigitte Edith Beaney

31st May 1994- 18th February 2023