I get along without you very well,
Poem by Jane Brown Thompson, 1937
Of course I do.
Except when soft rains fall
And drip from leaves, then I recall.
Of course I do.
But I get along without you very well.
One of my regular readers is a psychologist — which says something worrying about both of us.
She told me once that Bad Seed isn’t written to hurt anyone; it’s written to make sense of the hurt.
I liked that. Because the hurt isn’t just in my head — it’s stored lower, somewhere between breath and bone, like trauma that refuses to stretch out.
I get along without you very well…
Sometimes I think I’m fine. Then I feel something for someone — a spark, a pulse, a half-second of softness — and my body panics.
It remembers what came after softness.
It doesn’t need faces or places; affection itself is the trigger.
Of course I do…
They say in music you need ten perfect repetitions to erase one mistake. I’ve been trying that with feelings.
Practising closeness like a broken chord, hoping to play it without wincing.
Sometimes I almost get there.
Then I ruin the song and cry through the encore.
No applause, please — it’s mostly muscle memory anyway.
The Weight of It
The other night, my daughter started crying in her room.
I thought something serious had happened — broken heart, broken phone, something breakable.
Turned out nothing fit her anymore.
She stood in front of the mirror, furious at her reflection, hating her hips, her belly, the way her jeans laughed at her.
She said she was “fucking fat.”
She isn’t. She’s just growing up — learning what it means to have a body that takes up space.
Except sometimes…
She thinks she’s crying about clothes, but I know that cry. It’s the same one I do — just quieter.
My clothes fit fine.
That’s the problem — the hurt doesn’t.
The weight I carry isn’t measured in kilos — it’s memory.
I wear the past like a tight dress, beautiful and impossible to breathe in.
Still, I go out. I force myself to.
Because you need ten good repetitions to erase one bad one.
And sometimes, muscle memory surprises me.
The music takes over, and I move.
I talk, I laugh — my presence dancing with the red dress.
For a while, I’m the red dress in a room full of black ones.
Men notice. Eyes follow.
And for a split second, I believe I’m alive in the right body again.
Then, as sudden as it started, something shifts.
A glance, a warmth, a ghost of affection — and my body remembers the rest.
So I stop.
And disappear before anyone notices the lights went out.
I’ve forgotten you just like I should…
There we are then — two women, both fucking fat by our own definitions, but at least I’ve got the years to know how to take control of it.
Stockings help — they make surrender look structured.
Women must have control.
Control, after all, is just confidence with better lighting.
Jazz and Repetition
Berlin. I slip into that old-fashioned jazz club — velvet drapes, soft candlelight on each round table, waiters in crisp jackets offering drinks with no hurry. The service is civilised and slow. The air smells of bourbon, old leather, and the faint ghost-smoke of last night’s music.
On stage, a quartet tunes, the trumpet’s bell gleaming like a quiet wound. Then they begin a ballad in the style of Chet Baker — slow, intimate, every note hovering in suspension. His kind of sound: elegant, wounded, almost too fragile to keep living.
I get along without you very well…
The first notes pour out, lazy and deliberate, and something inside me breaks open — a quiet cry, soft and surprised. Not sadness, exactly. More like relief. Because somehow, after everything, I’ve lived through the hurt long enough to sit here again, in this room, in this moment, feeling like I am exactly where I should be.
My body stays still, but my presence dances — slow, deliberate — with the red dress.
It catches the candlelight and throws it back, as if it remembers how.
That’s when I see him.
A man, alone, watching the stage the way people watch the sea: for signs of something surfacing.
He listens like someone who’s already been forgotten very well.
We start talking — about jazz, about rhythm, about nothing that matters and everything that does.
He says jazz is about repetition — the same mistakes, played prettier each time.
I tell him that’s my writing process too.
Except sometimes…
He laughs.
And I remember what that feels like — being seen without being scanned for damage.
For a few songs, it’s easy. The smoke, the lights, the music doing all the heavy lifting.
I forget to protect myself.
Then the feeling comes — that small tremor of affection — and my body remembers the rest.
Every wrong note, every fade-out, every encore I didn’t want.
Except sometimes, when your name slips through my mind…
When the concert ends, I just smile and say, “It was nice to meet you.”
Then I leave.
That’s it.
Even goodbyes need perfect timing.
Making Sense
Maybe that’s what it all comes down to — repetition.
The stories, the songs, the mirrors, the men.
Trying to play the same mistake until it starts to sound like music.
I get along without you very well…
The psychologist — my faithful reader — was right: Bad Seed isn’t written to hurt anyone.
It’s written to make sense of the hurt.
And maybe that’s why I keep writing.
Not to get over it, but to understand it.
To give shape to something that would otherwise just sit there, shapeless and heavy, in the body.
Of course I do…
Because the hurt never really leaves.
It just changes instruments.
One day it’s a piano note that doesn’t resolve, the next it’s your daughter crying in her room, or a stranger in a jazz club who makes you remember that you’re still alive.
The weight of it shifts, but it never disappears.
You just learn how to carry it better — with posture, with humour, with stockings.
Except sometimes…
I used to think healing meant silence, but maybe it’s laughter.
The kind that sneaks up on you when you least expect it,
like the first note of a familiar song played softer than you remember.
I get along without you very well…
…of course I do.
So here I am.
Not fixed, not finished — just tuned differently.
Still writing, still rehearsing.
Still making sense of the hurt.
And maybe — just maybe — ready to laugh with someone.
With stockings on.
And being fucking fat.
Let me tell you a story 
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