Tag Archives: no

90. we lay on the deck and count the stars

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.

89. so we learn to fly

no response. my heart is the silence of the world sleeping.
i barely wrote about him: he never seemed to matter. you are my prince, patience incarnate. often all i need is that little piece of silent tenderness: i am simple but i change with the northerly wind.

all i seem to do is read and sleep: summer brings deep slumber to my senses and burning sun only makes itself felt on the nape of your neck. when my eyes see it, the gently tanned skin colour of sandalwood, an urge from deep within me wants to cradle it with the palms of my hands, feel its warmth as if through it i shall hold a ray of sunshine, all warm and sensual, taken from a book of mild erotica.

funny how when i felt it last, rejection felt like a consuming fire in every which one of my pores. now, it is a slight breeze tangling up my hair, soft sand in my eyes, thorny roses brushing against a scab: strangely seperate from me. 
you think i can’t see the pain in your eyes. true, you hide it well, but i know you and i know that i told you that he mattered in more ways than one would care to. i’m sorry.
S is nothing; i am love.

it’s about aesthetics, feeling, about loving contour and form and not it straight lines … and i got too attached to you, S. funny that, i try to live without feeling.

no response. so we learn to fly.

so there!

expendable
and with the blurring quality of a spanish sunset
i ought to stop dreaming of the miracle
they [nora knows] don’t happen ever

no fool but i expects
a man to build a roof over the pedestal
everyone knows statues have no eyes to worry about rain

sleep like trauma washing over me washing dishes
as if salt could wash away a man-made stain

what call you this
a fading jaded tan line of black bags under the eyes
what am i now
a landing strip stripped bare so there!

85. cherry soda loves

there was a line in streetcar named desire that i remember. it said it’s touching to notice them making their first discovery of love! As if nobody had ever known it before.  it resonates, for now the time has come for the bud to be broken and flowers to bloom in the late-spring night air.

the risk is nothing. nothing, really. there are only the long sprawling afternoons this side of summer, when paper is scrunched up into tiny little balls and burnt with a magnifying glass or matches. whichever, the result is all that matters. words are nothing: this air requires action! 
and there are trees, so beautiful this time of year. they remind me of walking to school in the summer and inhaling the scent of apple tree blossom with T. those were the days, eh?

but now, no now, those buds will open and blossom will scatter into the hands of a handsome young man that we choose. for me, this sweltering summer, it’ll be you. and, god willing (an expression i borrowed from an altogether more believing friend of mine), next summer also. for T (if we were boys, she’d be a brother from another mother) it will be someone else. Her new beau (a rather lovely Tenessee expression!). her very first. amazing stength and will and beauty.

so here we are, and isn’t it queer to think we shall be here always? in the arms of another, in the throes of spring, the coming summer alighting hopes in every single one of us, as if petards were thrown at the pavement before us, at our feet, at our willing young hearts?

and we can’t help this feeling hopeful. and we can’t pretend we didn’t want this life.
so every year, like clockwork, we will be discoving those cherry soda loves and shedding blossom in each other’s arms.

yes, i remember

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.