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.
Posted in chapters of my life
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bonne anniversaire!
i like the way it rings, reverbrating from the eardrums straight into the heart. it’s been a year.
only.
already.
and i don’t know how to feel, i just feel the need to thank you for the knowledge that someone in the world matters more than the world itself. je t’adore. and i’m not joking. sometimes, not too often, i catch myself pause in the middle of the sentence when i look at you because thoughts that flush into my head like tapwater into a blocked sink.
i’d say remember, but you do. every word i say. you’re magic, you hear me? maybe. telekenisis? unlikely. but know, if you do, that though you’re not here but somewhere else, my feeling never wanes. artificial flowers never wilt; real emotion never dies. sometimes it just recedes to the back of the mind. like magic.
you gave me the rosary beads from your first communion as a gift this morning. placed it along with your card on my porch. and i swear, i didn’t know what to do. it seemed like so much. a universe of you in my palm.
and i couldn’t wait to ask you about the meaning, though i knew. and you knew that i do. it’s a game we play because neither of us likes losing.
it’s a symbol that i’m ready to learn about it with you. and i can’t be sure that’s exactly what you said, but that’s what i heard.
and i’m stuck for words, but i sit here clutching at metal and plastic made to look like glass in silence and i know wherever i go, you’ll follow.
sometimes emotion is enough to fill the silence. this once, its more than enough.
Posted in chapters of my life
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when i was little i wanted to make magic, to pull the rabbit out of the hat and make things disappear before your very eyes. i got little magic kits for bithdays and watched magic shows on tv. i was an avid learner who learnt nothing at all, because now i know the real magic.
this is it.
and though it comes rarely, its arrival like a flight of a flock of swallows migrating south where warmth is surer, lustier, this is it. grass is always greener on the other side. bar this one. i’m not moving.
before you fly away, there’s always a rush of events whose sole purpose is to please me into oblivion until you are gone and the empty space forms where you ought to be. only this monday we found our song as we kissed in the middle of it, shakira singing for the crowd in which we were engulfed. that was your birthday present to me: shakira concert the day before the winter soltice.
today, it was your birthday: a small affair of our closest friends and family ties. but morning was ours. so absolutely ours.
magic is the feeling of being utterly in love. it is when you can’t help wondering qué haré si no te vuelvo a ver. it is melting in another’s arms like snow on warm day. it is falling in love and not knowing how to stop. not even wanting to stop.
and every time you go away, i wonder what will i do if i never see you return.
thank you for the magic.
Posted in chapters of my life
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what moved me yesterday was not the explosion after explosion in the sky, nor the coldness enveloping us in a tightly huddled mass of warm bodies. it was the way you looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time. or the last time. and i don’t know how much truth there is in the world, but so long you keep looking at me like that, my heart will long for yours.
yesterday was an annivesary in ways. 7 months, but more than that.
i was with X then, and with Y to an extent, but that night, a year ago, you held my hand in yours, warming it, holding me gently under the fireworks and the stars. a friend and no more, keeping me warm placidly yet wanting me wholly.
now i’m yours solely.
please burn for me still.
this was the poem i wrote for you a year ago. and now you know.
a drizzle of rain warms me up
like your hands on mine, polishing the silver
the ground not yet ready to settle, the sky – to erupt
and we are languishing in the middle
of the broken
reverie
I conceived with someone else
smiling in knowing
you’d carry my life on your shoulders if I let you
bequeathing me your last breath as a parting present
but how could I ever justify your love or lust
as we stand there under the unremitting gaze of stars
almost like an audience awaiting the typical finale
my heart so suddenly awake
wanting to take
all that you offer, grab it in handfuls
frigid hands clasping yours with the ferocity
that would make you bleed and leave crescent shapes
as a memory of my need
living signature of my greed
instead I leave you with a seed
of hope.
Posted in chapters of my life
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the world has a tendency to hit you all at once.
it leaves no time for pauses or breaks; no time for slow lives or lifeless existences.
this world you and i live in leaves us all only enough time for a sharp intake of breath before the tidal wave crashes.
but no matter the amount of sea-water in my nostrils, no matter the drenched clothes sticking to my paling torso or the panicky moment of blindness, when the eyes sting from the harsh impact, i always emerge victorious.
i sometimes think it’s because of viktor.
his name could never be changed. there is no letter in the english alphabet with which to replace it. maybe there is one in the ukrainian but that’s of no matter – no anonymity will mask his identity.
he was my first love.
no, he was an obsession.
love is something beyond that, below that, above that. he was no more than a motive, a mute name to dedicate my life to. a pause in the middle of every sentence, a stubborn glitter in the eye. you know of him. everyone always does. his name is forever embedded on my lips, like an infected tattoo.
and upon those lips, he stands victorious. for as much as his victory is on my lips, my victory is on his shoulders. i’m not scared of tornados now, nor of broken hearts. i’m not scared of storms, nor of ruptured heart strings.
he showed me that a heart can shatter without a single word and i could tell you that syllables never uttered hit harder than any word ever could, but that would be hypocrisy and i can be no hypocrite for in him is the mirage of my own bravery.
but ask me why it matters that the tuesday past one more admirer of my flawed mirror-glass started sweeping up the pieces of his fractured self. ask me and i will tell you, for that is one thing viktor will never know.
sometimes you must let love flow through your fingers, like molten chocolate, its slowly solidifying mass sweetsmelling on your fingers.
sometimes you must let it go, ridding your soul of the little titbits that should no longer matter – the creased used tickets from journeys long past, the old postcards from people lost somewhere in translation, the newspaper articles cut-out badly with blunt scissors stored in a soiled envelope somewhere.
yes, that sometimes is inevitable, but for me it never comes.
Posted in chapters of my life
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glittering soot on her eyelashes 