we don't know anything

I have used this piece of writing as a submission for a writing portfolio as part of my application for Bangor University (6th January 2015) -- Danielle Jade Dudley UPDATE: I got in

you wrote right-handed, but you played
the guitar left-handed. i asked you why
and your chapped lips formed a crumpled
smile, the smile that always reminded me
of a pink accordion, and you said, "i guess
my brain was just wired backwards that way."

those were the days when i was not a girl
made of smoke and charred bones,
(we pretended that i wasn't, anyway)
the days when i did not need a bottle the way
i had as a baby, now glass instead of plastic
(i hadn't yet recognised that i did, anyway)
and the words i love you spilled so naturally
over my lips like strawberry liquor.
i never told you how odd you looked
with your clothes on, did i?

you liked to play on the beach, alone,
at night time, the moon your spotlight,
the pallid sand your stage. naked, you
didn't sing in english; you said the stars
were your audience, and the only language
they understood was love. so you whooped
and wailed while your fingers tickled
the belly of the long-necked wooden animal that
you had fallen in love with long before i met you,
and the ocean roared for an encore after every
performance.

i never loved you as much as i did on the nights
i caught you crooning to the stars.

it was winter when i found you.
i knew something was wrong, because you hadn't
sung to the stars for a while, and they'd seemed to
grow larger, brighter, hungry for your voice.
the ocean was restless, slate-grey layers of misery
trampling over each other to snatch a sight of you.
your guitar lay in splinters against the rocks.
right-handed instrument, strung to play left-handed,
because your brain was wired backwards that way,
remember?

your brain was wired to be beautiful.

on the precipice of the cliff was a puddle
of faded denim and two battered shoes,
frayed laces outstretched towards the
beach like desperate white fingers.
and then, a bloody, naked smear against
a rock, a hundred, a thousand, a million
feet below.
i remember a seagull picking woefully
at your hair, sandy strands swaying
in the breeze like kelp.
the ocean howled and the sound was full of
loss.