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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sleepless night. blurring horizons. stars dancing in front of the eyes.
last night wasn’t good. it was almost entirely awful. a stomach bug my sister had had found its way into my system and was reluctant to leave. a virus no doubt, fighting for its survival and i couldn’t blame it.
bleary-eyed and throughly exhausted, i couldn’t blame it, because we’re all viruses in some respect, finding shreds to cling to, hopes we know will never come true and yet we still long for, impossible dreams, people we don’t love, places we don’t want to stay in.
we cling to the most peculiar things, thoughts, memories just to have something grounding us in this volatile world.
and so here’s me clinging to you, making you come round my house after you return from a day of hard work, hard study, just so that i can look into the vast expanse of your blue eyes, my hair uncombed, in my bed in my pyjamas, blacking out, hands shaking and still feel wanted right down to my very core.
can i kiss you on your forehead, at least? you ask and i protest, though to be in your arms is what i want, yearn for, almost need.
i don’t want to infect you.
i don’t want you to feel like i’m feeling right now because that would make things so much more difficult, don’t you understand?
there always has to be a virus and a host.
Posted in chapters of my life
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glittering soot on her eyelashes 