think of home for me, will you? hear the kettle boiling in the background, lone wolf howling in the night; the crockery clattering like crickets chirping; the steaming mug of coffee turning whiter still with every drop of milk.
remember the beige carpets, the perilous stairs, the strange creaking under floorboards: my parents’ house. or nobody’s house. a piece of rented haven.
but it was home. and d’you remember the first time we made out on the sofa in the living room downstairs? the day after i turned single and we couldn’t wait much longer? the irony of that day was not lost on me. how could it be? the impact on the window smashing is not forgotten by the frame: the memory is always there – gentle pulpitations in the soft grooves of the wood.
you see, beginnings shape the world.
quietly, carefully, they smooth the edges, polish outer surfaces, let us glean a little of the inside. they are a little mirror straight into the lover’s heart, a sphere held between the middle finger and the thumb, a kite.
it’s the beginning that lets me know where home is: with my hands on your neck; with your head on my lap.
certain things hit me with a strange ferocity. different velocity, acceleration, speed, but they are have one thing in common -somehow they wound me gently, taking care not to hurt too much or break more bones than will heal naturally given time and care.
it’s often words. soft, sometimes inaudible, but always taboo.
like the wednesday past, when i met your past love and she told me of the things you and her did, the way your breathing would take on an animalistic quality, as if the lion i know in you was roused, the way your face would contort at the end of it all, the way it made her laugh.
and then there was the way she asked about what we have done. and i told her. why wouldn’t i? let the vulture take its prey and feast on it. we all need nourishment of some kind and i guess my nourishment was hearing it all out in the open. everything has it’s price and well, she’s only me in retrospect.
those little things are enough to drive us insane, but i think we ought to face them head-on. that way we are the hunters and not the hunted.
and then there was this morning and a text from you telling of your time in france and how, by chance, you ended up sleeping only meters away from your parents and their squeaky bed last night and the night before.
and i don’t want to fill in the gaps.
my parents wouldn’t.
but we are all different, non? my morals are not yours. my horror is different to yours. ukrainian normality does not always collide with the french, i know that. you laid there in silence, but me, i’d get up and go to the bathroom, garden, i’d go out.
and suppose that’s us in twenty or thirty years time. does it scare you? it scares the blinking daylights out of me.
but what do i know of fear?
maybe i ought to go to war.
so here’s my rebuttal: we do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.
Posted in chapters of my life
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i only stop when i know i’ve had enough.
i guess i haven’t had my fill just yet.
you’ve gone to france, as you always do. your second life, i call it, but i dont blame you: that’s what a lifetime of living with parents who are teachers does to you. four weeks this time; it’ll be five the next or six, or whatever. but i’ve stopped counting the days. i learnt to live without salting my wounds.
Y went camping with his blonde, though she’s not blonde now but rather a seductive red. they’ve been together months now. it’ll be a year soon. october, i think.
he was meant to come back yesterday, but his phone was off. i called him twice. twice is always my limit.
i know i’ll call him again.
X is just an ex. we speak sporadically on msn and i’ve not been on the computer for days. i just couldn’t face the lonely screen staring in my face. i wanted physical contact, the sound of someone’s, anyone’s voice reverbrating in my eardrums.
and i read books. sartre, “streetcar named desire” and anais nin with her erotica. that put me down, but then, i wanted to be put down. sometimes there comes a point in our lives when we can no longer continue to believe in what we are believing until we see what else there is to see.
then there was Z. another reunion. he called me just now. for no reason. he didn’t say so, but then he rarely says a lot. he’s coming back from wales today. he was away for a week, but what more is there to it? it was another failed lesson in love for him, but i know i’m not the one to teach him.
in the end of all ends, i love you.
and i met your ex too on the days. that was fun. hurt me like crazy but it had to be done.
somewhere in between “the spy in the house of love” and “the age of reason”, i’d lost my wits. literature has a way of doing that to you.
i needed to see her.
i needed to feel the arterial spray of your past on my face.
let her do her worst i thought and damn, she tried her best.
Posted in chapters of my life
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half my life, i’m freefalling, the other half – looking back on the sights i’ve seen in those few moments before my parachute opened, before the maddening rush of adrenaline was curbed by my safety net, the soft fabric above me saving me.
you are that fabric – the fabric of my life spun by the yarn of your love, by the generosity of those hands turning the spindle.
all because you feel responsible for me. or maybe not.
in the end, my life’s my life: a merger of past faces, names, soft hands that once caressed my skin or longed to do so.
and you.
the thread of you’s the thread of me. and i want everyone you know to love me, unbearably, exquisitely so that you know the worth of love. so that you can count broken smiles knowing something inside them breaks for me.
an only child, i knew how to be painfully selfish. i learnt it well, my only teacher – solitude and parents’ love. but here i am, sister in tow, and still that only child rhetoric lives on in me. so once in a while, i feel in need of broken dreams of others to see my hope reflected in those pieces of looking-glass.
and if you can’t blame me who can blame me?
my friend once told me i was cruel to boys, to men, male counterparts. that i was cruel because my skattered gazes never solidified, my touch was soft but vapid, my hands gentle but uncaring. so what? i said it’s my revenge.
and so it is.
as sweet as lemon sorbet melting on my lips.
Posted in chapters of my life
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glittering soot on her eyelashes 
