since before i loved you

since before i loved you,
i dreamt of your eyes:
two slices of blue gulf
stripped along the horizon,
glistening
with a million years of rain.

i wanted them before i knew you,
i’m sure.

only they can penetrate me
with the force of a thousand burning suns.

i can feel them on my lips
through the sound of your breathing.

i love therefore i am.

———————————

sometimes i find it tough to show you that you’re the only one that matters in this life. and here you are: here i am.

71. thank you for the magic

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.

60. wrap threads of red silk around me

we, too, had gotten it all wrong more than once in our lives. we ran from desire instead of running towards it. disbelieved what mathematical induction could not prove, but what remains quite true: every pain, in every measure, can be counter-balanced by pleasure.

and i, the jagged tremor in your heart, the slight pause in your groan, am weak, for how many times i have surrendered to the illusion of lust?
but i shall find an excuse worth loving, a sentence worth of praise.

i am a woman. 
no, a girl.
but more than that, i cannot feel complete unless i am a pool, half-full, passion rising to the surface, black oil floating on translucent water. 

my heart is a pool collecting rivulets of desire in its basin, each drop – the sacred elixir of life. yes, i’ve changed. i used to say why be a man’s wife if you can be his mistress and now i’d rather say nothing at all.
now, i love you and you alone, but –

always a but-

i need the scarlet light to fall upon my form, if only to show off the violent carmine of my bullfighter’s cape.

my whole life is contained in the balance of virginal white and the shade of moonlight casting its fragile rays on lovers in the night. those colours merge to form my blood.
scarlet like the summer bloom of red roses, half-concealed by the shadows of rising sun.

and as i yearn for the chains of desire, wrap threads of red silk around me, dream me up sordid dreams.
i love you as you are, even if sometimes that’s not how it seems.

51. sometimes

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.

47. claiming the world

what does it feel like to claim and not be claimed?
i used to know.
i remember knowing, living for the memories. and recollections come and go, but it’s been close to never since that was me, claiming the world without giving anything back. and the gold thread of freedom trailed behind me, uscathed, untouched.
now, that thread, ulcerous tail, no longer golden, only appears when there’s a total eclipse of the heart.
it’s my firestarter, the shot signalling a race, a way of loving myself more by loving you less. 

and it’s nothing more than a joke – a special effect amidst an action movie; an actress screaming as ketchup flows from her imaginary wounds.
for you have become my all, mi vida, mi corazon.
you have claimed me, like france claims you again.

tonight, tomorrow, for days on end, you leave me here alone. no X, no Y, no admirers, no other loves. i cut those golden threads leaving only one.
my tarnished freedom. my back-up plan.

and i leave myslef vulnerable to you. to claim.

and maybe all i ever wanted was to be claimed, my rebellions just a show so that when the curtain call was done and i was in my dressing room, all alone, taking the make-up off my face, someone, anyone, would walk in and force me to my knees, making me love them without loving me back. 
and then, i would know what it was like to love a spy in the house of love. 
then, whatever i thought of them would be what the world thought of me and i would feel whatever the world felt after i claimed it.

and none of it would matter, because the world would still be mine.