through my paperround last year i met a wonderful man. he used to walk his dog as i’d deliver papers and we started talking around the time i started writing this blog. i think he’s 82: he must have mentioned it a while back. and i’m afraid there’s nothing literary about him: his existence is one of uncouth coutesy.
i quit the paperround a while back now but i still see him every sunday. nine o’clock in the morning, like church. he’s my little christian connection: even S is nowhere near taking his place. he gave me a bible with a picture of him in his youth stuck at the back, so that i remember him. secretly, i think, he believes that it will help me find him in heaven: he believes i will go there after all.
to my friends, this man is “the old man”. to me, he is much more than that. it may be true that i meet him every sunday partly because i feel like it’s my obligation, but also because somewhere beneath my skin there’s a tendon that connects me to him.
his wife died last night. or the night before that. and there’s no more words because i’m hurting for him. because how can one even begin to describe his pain?
i had made them a card only this march: they celebrated their 60th wedding annivesary.
sometimes he told me he wondered if she ever loved him but i know that was only because he loved her more than anything else. ever.
and it’s a little late for him to tell her, but i hope she knew. i think she knew.
Posted in chapters of my life
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yes, i remember
the blue sky with no horizon,
the trampled road we trod though
one april morning following another.
and the time was not stopping
but starting anew:
in me and in you,
even in those black eyes and hands
which longed for the other on these marshes.
we feared no ending: it would not come; not to us
who knew of life lived simply,
of lukewarm soup and truth before bedtime.
yes, i remember
and it will be alright.
Posted in excerpts
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interminable
as an endless circle
of coiled nucleic acid strand
without a protein coat
to hide in
so here you are:
i’m naked
like the moon,
causing the tides of your moods,
falling behind
the thick mesh of clouds
and reappearing
as a sliver
after total destruction
of another menstrual lifecycle
and i’ve noticed
you don’t see the moon unless you’re looking for it
or sleeping with your face under the open sky
its coming and going
passes the world silently by
that’s why my whole life
has been about finding
the blind spot
in the lover’s eyes.
Posted in excerpts
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one more year nearly over but this time i won’t attribute it to anyone. no, not to you or X or Y. it wasn’t mine either for it took me on a ride, spinning me around on a carousel of heights. and i can’t see the lows, looking back into all that time through my rose-tinted glasses. i can’t.
lets leave them lurking in the shadows, where past has teeth and broken dreams, like glitter, pave the floor.
i’ll visit them again. i have before.
i’m supersticious.
and i believe.
i believe that one must welcome a year in with the colours of its chinese animal; that one must drink a glass of champagne as the clock stikes midnight; that the way one spends new year’s eve will be the way one spends the year.
my supersticions supersede any norm of rationality, but darling, you said so yourself, i’m the luckiest person you know.
lets believe.
believe that there’s some truth to supersticion after all and drink champagne tonight.
and it’ll be the night when i will set the sky alight, our paper lantern flying up above. i’ve found love.
Posted in chapters of my life
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what moved me yesterday was not the explosion after explosion in the sky, nor the coldness enveloping us in a tightly huddled mass of warm bodies. it was the way you looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time. or the last time. and i don’t know how much truth there is in the world, but so long you keep looking at me like that, my heart will long for yours.
yesterday was an annivesary in ways. 7 months, but more than that.
i was with X then, and with Y to an extent, but that night, a year ago, you held my hand in yours, warming it, holding me gently under the fireworks and the stars. a friend and no more, keeping me warm placidly yet wanting me wholly.
now i’m yours solely.
please burn for me still.
this was the poem i wrote for you a year ago. and now you know.
a drizzle of rain warms me up
like your hands on mine, polishing the silver
the ground not yet ready to settle, the sky – to erupt
and we are languishing in the middle
of the broken
reverie
I conceived with someone else
smiling in knowing
you’d carry my life on your shoulders if I let you
bequeathing me your last breath as a parting present
but how could I ever justify your love or lust
as we stand there under the unremitting gaze of stars
almost like an audience awaiting the typical finale
my heart so suddenly awake
wanting to take
all that you offer, grab it in handfuls
frigid hands clasping yours with the ferocity
that would make you bleed and leave crescent shapes
as a memory of my need
living signature of my greed
instead I leave you with a seed
of hope.
Posted in chapters of my life
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glittering soot on her eyelashes 