Tag Archives: bitter

82. once in a million words

to know fear is to have never tasted it, that bitter acrid taste of rotting apples mixed with strong perfume. there is no knowing, only inhalation and dizziness before the lights go on. then, fear subsides.
the aftertaste remains. cologne is rotting. rotting all the same.

and swallowing the cider bile i stop. and start. i stop and start. and i remember that this was rhythm beaten out for me and Y. aeons ago, i would have told him this was our rhythm, that it was made for us. really, the rhythm is mine alone.
it is the heartbeat of a rabbit caught running in circles, breaking out of a different hole every time. only i have no space of time and who knows if i’m late?
there is no knowing here, only white roses being painted red. but i need no paint, truth always comes out in the end.

and this fear reigns over love. it transcends the borders of us and reproduces in our creations. why is that, will you tell me?
it must be us, the charcoal darkening the paper.
it must be orange juice spilt on a linen cloth. or coffee. coffee on those tiles.

still, it’s so nice to be able taste fear once in a million words, wouldn’t you say?

73. so you can stop and wonder if i’m yours

i’ve decided, i won’t allow words to tear us all apart. and my pain shouldn’t matter. this pain is fleeting. and my heart will be beating into the next millenium, where loves bloom redder than cranberries in the bitter frost.

i said something important to you yesterday. via text. and i don’t know if you picked up on it. so many words get lost in translation  from my world to yours.

i don’t believe that every little death brings one closer to life, but i do believe that every little love does.

and i have loved you inconsistently, wrongly asking you to love me as i wish. maybe you can’t love me with all the roses and the cards. maybe my loves are too extravagant for you. maybe i ask too much without the need for such. but i can dream.

and i will dream. in silence.
my dreams will burn and burn.
for three weeks at the very least, i’ll be perfect. and i won’t argue and i won’t bite.

so you can taste the cranberries as they were before the winter, so you can stop and wonder if i’m yours.

your life is blistered…

your life is blistered
by the setting sun
and dreams we dreamt
as if we were living
for one life only

the jokes we told
today: the ironies of life,
the laughs we laughed
callused by bitter strangeness 

adieu
to you
is but a foreign language
to me it’s broken glow stick lighting up the sky

 i’ll say goodbye
but not in english

i’ll say goodbye
and it will be forever new.

————————————————–

last weekend i was away with friends. trekking. miles walked under the coldness of october sun with you, with Y and others. according to Y it is over a year since he began life anew with his blonde. i know it isn’t. the day he professes their anniversary is the day i spent crying in his arms. it was the day when i almost begged him for a platonic kiss. it was the day he said “how can it be platonic if we are in love?”

49. and to think i used to call him mine

if he ever tried to retrace his steps, Y would still be here. there’s only so many lives a man can lead. whilst i lived out my three, not quite a cat but near enough the slinky nine, he could barely grasp onto one.

so here we are again. and he won’t admit that he was wrong to have jilted me at my elusive altar and though i’m not bitter, i still think it should have been me to have waved the first goodbye. i was never the taker for seconds.
now we speak for barely more than seconds.

and we had a conversation today. somehow i manipulated minutes out of him when he claimed to have none. and he wants me to call on a weekend. and he listened to my poetry of loving women and war poets. it’s been a while. but i’ll let him live his life. that one life he holds onto like a raft in a burly sea.
those sort of lives were never meant for me: i like mine long and luscious, like sweltering summer days.

and when i read him my lines, he stopped talking altogether, pondering, wondering, what it was that i meant, knowing it concerned him but not knowing how.

and to think i used to call him mine.

35. we parted with a soft beep and a stone upon our chests

have you noticed we always have this thing of bringing up the pain before we part, as if we need that food for thought in seperation?
and late at night, when lights are off, we lay there in deep silence engulfed by other person’s hurt, forgetting ours so well. and every shadow on the wall from passing cars or people we see from our beds is just another memory of me and you and this.

last night i laid there recieving the night like hapless counterpart, ill all day, i was happy to recline back in my bed, my throat like partched white paper, both inside and out. and your voice was like my savior, a ray of sunlight in the realm of the shadows, as i listened to your every syllable over the sleek grey phone, loving and unloving every word.

but one phrase or maybe more snapped a tight elastic around my heart, that forbidden line where the predator in me sleeps, and the rush of blood to the head roused me. containing the beast within me as best as i could, i asked you not to talk about it again. but you did and i snapped outright, a lion roar echoing in the enclosure of my room.
and then i told you the bitter truths.
and then i had to go.

and at midnight, we parted with a soft beep and a stone upon our chests.
in my realm, nightmares followed.
in yours, a silent thought of me.