Bambi (The Birth of Venus)

Imagine you’re barefoot, and the floor is covered in CDs in their cases that you’ve collected ever since your heart broke last. Bossanova, Pink Robots, the Bridget Jones soundtrack; they break under your bare, stripped feet and the sound of the cracks fills the room with an ambience that remains even with the window jammed open to air it out for the summer. It stains the walls.

The floor is covered in everything you’ve ever stolen. Your toes struggle around glass pebbles you found in a vase at work, and little mini jars of jam you gave to your mum that very last time you went home. Your foot recoils from the cold of a small shell you found in the gravel garden of an after party where you had a bad trip; you land and gently roll your foot instead on a pair of chopsticks from a date you accidentally went on, and sketching pencils you can never return to your dad. You cover your ears to hear the lead snap.

Imagine around your ankles you catch laughable faded neon pink knickers, the sewing around the sides falling out like impatiens petals from their trampled bed. They rip as you try to step out of them, and you make a note to throw them out. You don’t do so until they trip you up a few times more. 

The floor is covered in bare mattresses, and there are little dots of black that you’re convinced are bedbugs as the soles of your feet start to itch. The floor is grey and covered in unidentified punch, and now your ankle is swelling. The floor is grass and you’re perched by salty water, and as your leg goes pins-and-needles someone or two reach their arms out to you; you get up by yourself but you limp for a while, and they call you Bambi on ice.