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.
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i know the child in you. the one which craves the praise from the lips it longs to kiss. and yet the child cannot accept it, for the twinge of sarcasm ibmursed in the words.
and then you long for the acceptance of your mother, father, brother: their words of praise, like mine, cherished but disbelieved.
what of it? one must live for something.
you live for praise.
i live for love.
the english boy’s resurfaced. just like i predicted, him and the girl broke up. now, he is moving on. moving on me, maybe, but i reckon just moving on to the world. today, he approached me three times. and every time, i bat away his advances with a smile on my face. why should i contemplate burning for him if i am the candle of your life?
too many lives, too many stories and there will be no more parafin, no more wax, no more light. i am aware of that.
i lived through life before you.
now i know it’s enough to burn for you so let S burn for me.
and let the whole world ignite for me. for this love, this kiss, as it opens its bud of sunshine every morning on your lips.
Posted in chapters of my life
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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.
Posted in chapters of my life
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suppose we hit a golden spiral
taking us back to 33a.d.
then, the bud of us was no more than a swelling tear
cascading down a woman’s cheek,
metamorphosing red
upon converging with the blistering sand
somewhere north of mount zion
dare i purport that was the birth of us?
before the saviour even breathed his last
and saved us all. or so they say.
the fortunate. believers.
and i’d like to believe in something.
anything at all.
still, mind not that mary wept for us, in our creation,
just keep your wandering eyes on that carnation,
scarlet turning to hot pink in the lewd glare of the sun
under your hands, the buttons of my shirt fumble undone.
————————————————————-
Christians believe that the first carnation bloomed on earth when Mary wept for Jesus as he carried his cross.
Posted in excerpts
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glittering soot on her eyelashes 