Tag Archives: better

90. we lay on the deck and count the stars

morning
8:30 a.m.

he did not recieve the text. good. so we chat. friends, not lovers, that we are: i question him of things and he shares his good news with me. at midnight. not that i didn’t ask him to, but he doesn’t bother informing you. funny?

relieved, i don’t think of the saved blushes and the heat does not rise to my cheeks: it doesn’t need to. 
a sigh escapes like a fly through the open window, its wings no longer beating against the cold clear pane of glass.  
phone on, i wait to hear a beep. from you or him, it hardly seems to matter.

i sleep lightly as of late, or as of early. since our trio of sleepover nights, it’s been better, but sometimes, i will wake up in the night and think you are with me, curled up on the floor.
no longer an insomniac, i don’t know how to classify myself. i want a tidy name to sum it all up. there isn’t one.

i’m on the edge right now and it’s nothing to do with the pair of you. my future lies within these very moments, encapsulated in the smell of old books and pheromones surging.
i call the number. it is busy. so i call again.
right now, all i care about is that the phone is picked up and they listen to me, if even for a while.

evening
9:30 p.m.

i heard a no. loud and clear, like a dead weight going into cold blue-black water.
deep, guttural sounds of a storm brewing. but the storm is already over. we lay on the deck and count the stars.

67. just alive

how is it that i still haven’t learnt to recieve compliments? years gone by and i’m still the ugly duckling waiting to become the swan. i’m told i’m there, but how can i believe my luck? nobody’s born lucky enough to have it all.

on friday we were at the first party either of us have been to in ages.
it was a success.
my nude dress, hair let loose on the wind and glittering stilettos, yes i was there. and you couldn’t stop staring. i had a ball: i danced and danced all night. jamming. grinding. skanking. crude is better than not at all. and it was a hit. i danced with guys and girls alike. 
i danced with you too, but that was more intimate, more reserved.

an hour before midnight, not even tipsy, i sat by your side, drinking. i was not exhaused, just alive. and a boy approached us. almost everyone there knew we were together.
he didn’t. he told me you look goregeous and you’re the hottest girl at the party and smiling politely i froze inside.

me?
gorgeous? … me?

he continued: i suppose this is your boyfriend? i retorted yes, without hesitation. YES. and then, i asked him to dance. he was awkward, kept saying you’d probably be better at dancing than him. i told him he danced well. then one of your friends came and talked to me. the boy slid away.

at the end of the night i saw him again. i said a few polite comments about the night and then, as i saw a vaquishing look in his eyes, we were gone.
i – the cinderella, you – my prince.

fairytale innuendo

i’ll kiss it better
before you know you’re hurt

i won’t be curt 

i won’t pretend
that all those dreams are any more than
liquor on my lips
flour on my fingertips

there’s nothing a pinch of salt can’t cure

please be secure:
i’m doing all i can.

————————————————

and this love is amazing. the things i say are stupid sometimes or even downright crude. those fantasies are nothing more than a fairytale innuendo.
know that.

30. love’s only ignorance after all

like a tidal wave, i ride out the headache, the thump thump thump just a sound in the vast expanse of the sea.

and in the moment, i think of what was washed away by the tide of time, the pebbles lost in the deep blue. it’s odd how Y has almost disappered from my horizon, no longer the blinding sun, he turned to ash, forming a grey flock of seaguls in the azure sky.
my handsome dark prince no more, thought that no more is questionable for he was never handsome, never even in the delirium of my mind. i knew better than that, my heart just as sensible as my head.

i’d say these thoughts are stemming from nothing, that they are messages in ancient bottles surfacing again after aeons of days and nights in the depth of the gurgling waters of my dreams but that is not so.
i realise now that only by observing others do we learn a little of ourselves.
today i saw love as it really is, undiluted, unblemished. i saw that look of helpless adoration, unconditional, my friend’s eyes glistening as if he was perfect for her and she for him.
and it didn’t surprise me much that he was not handsome, nor intelligent, nor charismatic much and i understood it all. what surprised me was that it didn’t concern me that i’ve never felt like that.

love’s only ignorance after all.

19. i live it. so hate me.

if you only just asked me why i do it, i’d have told you it was out of insecurity.
if you asked me to stop, i’d say that  i couldn’t, though i tried.
if you begged me to stop hurting you… i’d break apart.

and the world is full of ifs, but there are facts too.
Y and X and Z and you, it seems, are not enough for me.
it only seems, because i don’t really know. it seems, because there’s a new actor on the stage. and i don’t know him much, but he can raise the butteflies in my stomach. and we flirted, maybe even courted, a little bit today. in front of you. and i thought your heart would break, but i couldn’t stop it, i couldn’t not laugh at every joke he said or smile at him like i smile at you.

so hate me.

and sometimes i wish you would. but you don’t, because you love me. you don’t because you’re better than me. but then again, is that really true? or are you holding on because you’re scared to let go?

if i were to tell you that i’ll never be yours, will you still be there in the morning, smiling at me, carrying my folders, love radiating in every gesture?
would you still want to hold me and never let go?
would you understand and accept me as i am, knowing that the day will come when i will leave the nest you’ve made me and fly away into another’s arms?

and i can’t put it into words, but i’ve found a poem that does.
it’s not mine, i just wish it was. and i love it.
i live it.

have a read. love it too.
but don’t live it please, cos i’m not as strong as you.

i couldn’t take you leaving me.
i’d  be the first to leave you.

—————————————-

I Scandalize Myself

I must tell my father
that the only man for whom “desire shattered me”
looked exactly like him,

and tell my friends
that I have different pictures of myself,
all true, all me,
that I will distribute among them one at a time.

I must tell my lover,
“Be grateful for my infidelities.
Without them
I wouldn’t have waited all this time
to discover the exceptional pause in your laugh.”

As for me
I am almost certain
that I scandalize myself
to hide behind it.

Iman Mersal

and that’s the poem. don’t you just love it?
don’t you just?