84. that will be all

it’s time for answers. or questions. whichever. 
a fellow writer inspired me to think about a few. and they started the clock tick-tocking inside my mind: what did a girl like me want anyhow? what is the dream, the true ideal?

 

1. i’d like a picture of you on my windowsill by my bed: to keep, to hold, to treasure. it will be my reminder that you exist and when i wake up in the middle of the night, wondering if i dreamt up my whole life, i want it there to touch. it’ll be solid in my hands. a relic. and it’ll be in a mosaic picture-frame we’ve yet to buy. in barcelona or in paris (just because i like the way you say it) or in a magic place far away.

2. i’d like to have you on call, running to me whenever i need you there and sometimes just because. you know: for no reason, just because i want to be in your arms where it’s never lonely.  

3. and i want you to have eyes for nobody else but me, following me, stalking me, penetrating me anew with every gaze. i want them to ask me for affirmation of my love every morning and i want them to drown me whole, as if they were not eyes but lagoons of clear-blue water in devon, on hot summer afternoon, when all you want is to immerse yourself whole in water .

4. but more than anything, i’d like to know that this is where you want to be: here with me.

5. that will be all.

81. the yellow vibrancy of life

how vain i should be to reread my own posts, but sometimes, late at night or early in the morning, i find myself scrolling through the past on the computer, mouthing the words or simply caressing them with my eyes. because within me there is something i have not yet understood. an undercurrent of a river lost in my old, unpracticed tongue.
rio de la plata maybe. or river of the sun.

even the sun has sunspots, darker on the background of virginal white; and so i have the blind spots: i always find them when i try. no light is enough to banish the spot of darkess on my sleeve: the drop of blood refusing to wash off in hot water. it would wash off in the cold, i know, but it’ll never get the chance.
chances are far and in between, don’t you know?

and i find myself every time, unexpected, like red peonies on a rose bush in may.
находжу себе кожен раз в шматку чорного хліба.

but what is there to find, other than the poems i had learnt by heart in years three and five. and seven. wordsworth’s daffodils.
the yellow vibrancy of life.

who was it?

who’s been alive in you,
wading in the mesh of liquid wires
through the medleys half-sung and the letters unsent
the nights wasted sleeping
time, like currency, spent

who drew the curtains, left vacant sign
on every window of every door
and begged the world to give you more
than this

who was it?

———————————————————————–

everybody who has ever been truly loved has that person, that left them because they loved them far too much to let them settle for a rainbow in the sky.

52. the wedding confetti of childhood

what forgiveness is there for fear, the unnecessary fear of sorts? the one we get when a balloon we’re blowing up explodes in our face, its thin rubber, suddenly in pieces, falling in slow motion to the floor. the wedding confetti of childhood.

what forgiveness is there?

and as i pick up the tatters of my spheres of untainted colour, once so full of air, now – stickenly empty, i wonder if we learn to forgive just like we learn to stop at the crossroads of life and choose the path well-trodden. for, sunshine, we are pack creatures, us humans, going through life like cattle entering the slaughterhouse.
we scent fear in others, just like we scent fear in solitude, but we always follow the leader.
that’s what makes us human.

it makes me wonder if growing up is something to be scared of or something one must learn to forgive themselves. for fear and forgiveness are never far from each other really. what we fear, we learn to forgive. what we forgive, we often fear.

but tell me, darling, why do i fear tomorrow, its powerful wings knocking me off the pedestal you, T, X, Y, you all, put me on?
why do i tremble with the thought of entering the world a year older, learning its ways anew, clutching the straws of past like a shield?

and i know there’s no means to contain time. it trickles by, running like sand through the fingers, never pausing for breath.
but we all try. 
and you must fogive me just this trying, this ever-present fear of fying without wings, for a year older, i still won’t be letting go of the marred ribbons of my life that kept me up thus far.

i want to see this confetti fly up into the sky.

50. my heartbeat keeps the coffee flowing

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.