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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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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how vain i should be to reread my own posts, but sometimes, late at night or early in the morning, i find myself scrolling through the past on the computer, mouthing the words or simply caressing them with my eyes. because within me there is something i have not yet understood. an undercurrent of a river lost in my old, unpracticed tongue.
rio de la plata maybe. or river of the sun.
even the sun has sunspots, darker on the background of virginal white; and so i have the blind spots: i always find them when i try. no light is enough to banish the spot of darkess on my sleeve: the drop of blood refusing to wash off in hot water. it would wash off in the cold, i know, but it’ll never get the chance.
chances are far and in between, don’t you know?
and i find myself every time, unexpected, like red peonies on a rose bush in may.
находжу себе кожен раз в шматку чорного хліба.
but what is there to find, other than the poems i had learnt by heart in years three and five. and seven. wordsworth’s daffodils.
the yellow vibrancy of life.
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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do you reckon we could make snow angels without snow? we could scrape ourselves against the ground, delirium of cold seeping through our pores. then, maybe then, our bodies would scrape away the frost from the pavement without drawing blood. maybe the ice will shatter somewhere inside of us. i’m cold tonight and nothing will warm me.
more than anything, i’d like for the sunset to come around again.
more violent this time, more primitive, innate; heat firing my synapses all at once with broken impulses. and i want it to smell of freshly brewed coffee in a little cafe on a little hidden street nobody knows but stumbles onto by chance. we must always roll the die of life. it’s in the eyes. always in the eyes.
like silence.
yesterday i would have told you it never comes around, but silence came. and now i know true silence is that which lies in the inevitability of it being broken any moment now. suppose it’s like cutting a cake. don’t ask me why.
and when it comes around you can see it lurking like a shadow in the eyes. a vapid corner of pitch black dark. but we are burning embers in the shadows of the light.
come with me: it will be alright.
i have decided that i will be cold tonight.
but i will try to warm you up.
Posted in chapters of my life
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glittering soot on her eyelashes 