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.

40. chronic unhappiness

putting up with my chronic unhappiness must drive you mad, my love.
and though i want nothing more than for you to be happy always, sadness never near, as if you put a restraining order on it, don’t expect the same for me. truth is, i almost like being miserable. it’s like it’s my motivation to bring up every frustration at dinner time and know that very little of it really hurts me. 
so sweet to taste victory after proclaiming defeat. and when you start winning, you want more. you always want more.

noone ever died from wanting too much

and that could be the soundtrack to my life, it really could. 

the world is not enough
but it is such a perfect place to start, my love

but you don’t believe that do you?
you’re happy with the way we are, blissfully unaware of the way i hurt inside, thinking that you expect so much of me, the way every time i feel the burning need to give more and more, but seem able only to give less.

still, this is not the end.
i don’t believe there will be one, because i don’t want it to end. ever. but is that just me wanting too much again?

and right now i’m just not sure. yesterday hurt, if not you, then me. the conversation, the way you looked at me, the cold i felt eminating from the familiar warm mound of you on the bed there.
still, i’ll try to set the memories of our hurts alight, because really there aren’t that many. because i love you more than that.  

if we can’t have it all
then nobody will

but, my love, i’m afraid i can’t do a thing about my chronic unhapiness.
it’s become a part of me. just like you.

29. or maybe not yours at all

we talked about baby names today. not that we’ll have kids. not even that we’d ever want to, but that’s how conversation strays, non, mon ami? and we can laugh and giggle all we want but in the end, would we ever want a family?
it’s not something we have, or at least i have, thought about.

you think i’m not a family sort of girl and maybe i’m not. i don’t tell you enough about myself fro you to really know.
all you know is the way my breath tastes on your tongue and the way my hair flutters in the cold winter wind, ponytail restricting its movement. containing it.
and that’s all you need to know.

aren’t you happy with the piece of thread i stretch out to you, like a life line? the way i pretend there’s nothing else connecting us, because that’s the way i work?
and this is it. this is me. a solitary link in the collective chain, a broken smile amidst the glum faces.

yours and someone else’s.
or maybe not yours at all.

13. maybe you can change that when you come back

you’re still not back. or maybe you are, but i was not told of your return. i sent you a text last night. it’s not that i really missed you when you you were away, it’s just that i want you back here already. i’d like to pour out some thoughts at you, criticise a few people, gloat, get mad at you and then realise that is what i was expecting of the conversation all along – the quiet notes of sarcasm, the audible longing to be mine, the comfortable pauses you for some reason want to fill in. why do you want to fill them in?

yesterday i thought i’d get to talk to you at last. it’s not even that i’d hoped for it, no, i expected it. it was virtually a given. but no.
so i spoke to Y instead. i called him, of course.
he did call me the day before, around eight at night, but i was asleep then, the sheer exhaustion of the past few days tiring me out ot the point that i never woke up from my hour-long nap, or at least not until the next morning.

it’s strange to think he meant so much to me. he doesn’t really now. i talk to him, hell yeah, but that is it. i can’t imagine him being in my life again, his selfish ways, his trying to be what he isn’t, his race issues. no, i could not deal with that again.

but you. could i deal with you?
i’m not quite sure of that either. you’re so complex, you yearn for so much. you’re just like me.
and X is uncomplicated. simple. easy to understand. easy to deal with.
i guess that’s why he’s in my life.
i guess that’s why i’m still holding on to the dream that never was.

maybe you can change that when you come back.  
and maybe, just maybe, you can’t…

7. if only for a little while

i wonder if i’ve gone crazy in the last couple of months, assuming that everyone but me is wrong, at least a little wrong in their perception of life. maybe it was i who was wrong, who pushed people to the brink, making them close up like a venus trap. then again, maybe it was them. hey, who knows. all i know is, things seem so much different these days.

take X for example.

called him today – we’re going ice-skating tomorrow you see. i wasn’t going to mourn your going away by sitting at home thinking of how much fun you must be having listening to all those people talking in a language so much more fluid than mine, with much sexier accents than mine, their much sharper features than mine making you fall in love with them.

so yes, as i was saying… i called him up just now, a little while ago. we have just finished the conversation in fact. didn’t expect much from that phone call really. you know how it is – no substance, pauses stretching into what seems like eternity, that sort of stuff. but that wasn’t it. that wasn’t it at all. he talked so well, so freely, as if he wasn’t the boy i used to know at all. as if he wasn’t the reason i turned to you for conversation and understanding in the first place. as if he changed. as if i changed him. 

it’s strange, you know, i can almost picture a happy ending with him.
not quite bliss, but something close.
mutual awareness of the world around us.
yes, i can see it all – the galleries, the parties, even the nights in. i couldn’t see that there before. maybe because i didn’t believe.
but what changed?

so we talked for an hour, me and him. it wasn’t forced as usual, it wasn’t difficult on either party. it was comforting. 
with you gone, if only for a little while, i know i can now put the effort into me and him. there were times i thought i could avoid it. there were times i resented him for even being there, but he cares. as do you of course, but you won’t be there, so your eyes won’t have to witness my betrayal.

enjoy your trip to france, boy.

au revoir!
if only for a little while