95. when air grows warm and shallow

i am discovering this world, not unlike a newborn: scent by scent, piece by piece. and aren’t we all?
no questions plague me, no worries weigh me down and nothing seems to matter very much at all. estoy contento.

it’s all about times like this in life: when air grows warm and shallow and eyelids flutter, cascading downwards to close in a sort of tired midnight bliss.
it’s times like this. times where you sit by the radiator, mid-october, and listen to life happen outside your window, noise by noise, laugh by laugh, the voices merging with the wind and night.

and all you feel is warmth, a yearning for a hibernation.
as nights grow longer – a pressing need to forget all and sleep in; to snuggle up for that one moment more, underneath the covers vividly coloured with summer – oranges and fuscia pinks – and dream of snow.

i want the frigid maiden winter and all her hidden joys: falling flat on your face iceskating, hot chocolate held in cupped frozen hands, reading old classics under the covers, red noses, father christmas and the constant sparkle of magic in the air.
i want it all and yet estoy contento with all i have right now, right here: the oranges and reds, the windy mornings drizzling with rain of new beginnings.

i have it all, your fingers in my hair.

85. cherry soda loves

there was a line in streetcar named desire that i remember. it said it’s touching to notice them making their first discovery of love! As if nobody had ever known it before.  it resonates, for now the time has come for the bud to be broken and flowers to bloom in the late-spring night air.

the risk is nothing. nothing, really. there are only the long sprawling afternoons this side of summer, when paper is scrunched up into tiny little balls and burnt with a magnifying glass or matches. whichever, the result is all that matters. words are nothing: this air requires action! 
and there are trees, so beautiful this time of year. they remind me of walking to school in the summer and inhaling the scent of apple tree blossom with T. those were the days, eh?

but now, no now, those buds will open and blossom will scatter into the hands of a handsome young man that we choose. for me, this sweltering summer, it’ll be you. and, god willing (an expression i borrowed from an altogether more believing friend of mine), next summer also. for T (if we were boys, she’d be a brother from another mother) it will be someone else. Her new beau (a rather lovely Tenessee expression!). her very first. amazing stength and will and beauty.

so here we are, and isn’t it queer to think we shall be here always? in the arms of another, in the throes of spring, the coming summer alighting hopes in every single one of us, as if petards were thrown at the pavement before us, at our feet, at our willing young hearts?

and we can’t help this feeling hopeful. and we can’t pretend we didn’t want this life.
so every year, like clockwork, we will be discoving those cherry soda loves and shedding blossom in each other’s arms.

exactly how i am

when world’s the wheel and you’re the car its driving
when streetlights shatter in the sticky summer air
when sky’s blue-black with stark impressions
of things unspoken in the glint of lovers eyes
then you will know the power of rejection
then you will know the insecurity in me
until that day amour, just let me be
let me be exactly how I am.

52. the wedding confetti of childhood

what forgiveness is there for fear, the unnecessary fear of sorts? the one we get when a balloon we’re blowing up explodes in our face, its thin rubber, suddenly in pieces, falling in slow motion to the floor. the wedding confetti of childhood.

what forgiveness is there?

and as i pick up the tatters of my spheres of untainted colour, once so full of air, now – stickenly empty, i wonder if we learn to forgive just like we learn to stop at the crossroads of life and choose the path well-trodden. for, sunshine, we are pack creatures, us humans, going through life like cattle entering the slaughterhouse.
we scent fear in others, just like we scent fear in solitude, but we always follow the leader.
that’s what makes us human.

it makes me wonder if growing up is something to be scared of or something one must learn to forgive themselves. for fear and forgiveness are never far from each other really. what we fear, we learn to forgive. what we forgive, we often fear.

but tell me, darling, why do i fear tomorrow, its powerful wings knocking me off the pedestal you, T, X, Y, you all, put me on?
why do i tremble with the thought of entering the world a year older, learning its ways anew, clutching the straws of past like a shield?

and i know there’s no means to contain time. it trickles by, running like sand through the fingers, never pausing for breath.
but we all try. 
and you must fogive me just this trying, this ever-present fear of fying without wings, for a year older, i still won’t be letting go of the marred ribbons of my life that kept me up thus far.

i want to see this confetti fly up into the sky.

50. my heartbeat keeps the coffee flowing

can you tell me, why de ja vu haunts me like a predator stalking its only surviving prey? the de ja vu, embossed with its frenchness. just like you. just like those kisses you plant on my lips, their buds opening in the middle of the darkest nights, as i wake in cold sweat, clammy hands turning on the lights to chase the demons away.

and i realise, that love is french, italian, dominican. but more than that, it’s foreign to all of us. it’s language – mysterious hum in the early-morning air, it’s lands – unbounded by borders, it’s people waking up every morning, just like the rest of us, seductive scent of coffee in their kitchens, shatter of broken cups imprinting its echo on the windows.

and when i think of love, i think of the mess that coffee would make, drops collecting, puddle spreading with every beat of the heart. my mess.
and it doesnt touch you. you’re not really here. not entirely. 
and love doesn’t cut you with its broken china or stain your slippers with instant coffee, fresh those marble tiles.
does it touch you at all?

…

it’s been three months now and i’ve nothing to tell me that i’m yours, only a herbarium of those flowers you bought me the day my mother went to the zoo with my little sister in tow.
only a dead plant, in an envelope somewhere, next to Y’s unopened loveletters and the note that X kissed so that a part of him may remain with me forever, or whatever his reasoning was.

and at night, in somebody’s kitchen, in a land far away, my heartbeat keeps the coffee flowing.