morning
8:30 a.m.
he did not recieve the text. good. so we chat. friends, not lovers, that we are: i question him of things and he shares his good news with me. at midnight. not that i didn’t ask him to, but he doesn’t bother informing you. funny?
relieved, i don’t think of the saved blushes and the heat does not rise to my cheeks: it doesn’t need to.
a sigh escapes like a fly through the open window, its wings no longer beating against the cold clear pane of glass.
phone on, i wait to hear a beep. from you or him, it hardly seems to matter.
i sleep lightly as of late, or as of early. since our trio of sleepover nights, it’s been better, but sometimes, i will wake up in the night and think you are with me, curled up on the floor.
no longer an insomniac, i don’t know how to classify myself. i want a tidy name to sum it all up. there isn’t one.
i’m on the edge right now and it’s nothing to do with the pair of you. my future lies within these very moments, encapsulated in the smell of old books and pheromones surging.
i call the number. it is busy. so i call again.
right now, all i care about is that the phone is picked up and they listen to me, if even for a while.
evening
9:30 p.m.
i heard a no. loud and clear, like a dead weight going into cold blue-black water.
deep, guttural sounds of a storm brewing. but the storm is already over. we lay on the deck and count the stars.
Posted in chapters of my life
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through my paperround last year i met a wonderful man. he used to walk his dog as i’d deliver papers and we started talking around the time i started writing this blog. i think he’s 82: he must have mentioned it a while back. and i’m afraid there’s nothing literary about him: his existence is one of uncouth coutesy.
i quit the paperround a while back now but i still see him every sunday. nine o’clock in the morning, like church. he’s my little christian connection: even S is nowhere near taking his place. he gave me a bible with a picture of him in his youth stuck at the back, so that i remember him. secretly, i think, he believes that it will help me find him in heaven: he believes i will go there after all.
to my friends, this man is “the old man”. to me, he is much more than that. it may be true that i meet him every sunday partly because i feel like it’s my obligation, but also because somewhere beneath my skin there’s a tendon that connects me to him.
his wife died last night. or the night before that. and there’s no more words because i’m hurting for him. because how can one even begin to describe his pain?
i had made them a card only this march: they celebrated their 60th wedding annivesary.
sometimes he told me he wondered if she ever loved him but i know that was only because he loved her more than anything else. ever.
and it’s a little late for him to tell her, but i hope she knew. i think she knew.
Posted in chapters of my life
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yes, i remember
the blue sky with no horizon,
the trampled road we trod though
one april morning following another.
and the time was not stopping
but starting anew:
in me and in you,
even in those black eyes and hands
which longed for the other on these marshes.
we feared no ending: it would not come; not to us
who knew of life lived simply,
of lukewarm soup and truth before bedtime.
yes, i remember
and it will be alright.
Posted in excerpts
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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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will anybody tell me if i’m missing out on life?
will anyone write me a letter just so i know?
and everybody seems to be making a film, a compilation of their thoughts right here, right now. irony is, i’m wasting my words on the wind, across the telephone wires that stretch inside my head. and when i am brave enough to speak my words out, they are spoken to you alone. what about the rest of the world? how will they ever know?
you made a film with your friends. i guess that’s what you do in youth.
me? i used to leave my colouring books blank for fear of spoiling them. funny me.
and whenever creativity came to me, i wrote the words, drew the pictures on scraps of paper. i still have some of them. little pieces of my mind written in quickhand. 
and though none of them relate to you, all that i remember of X is there: they are silent exultations, utterances of pain and dreams. they are free.
sometimes, i still wish i coloured those pictures in.
and sometimes i know there’s no use wishing: it’s all too late now. i’ve sketched my life out in this morning sunshine. whatever happens now was always meant to be.
Posted in Uncategorized
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glittering soot on her eyelashes 