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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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.
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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.
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soar!
above the mountains, touching rooftops
where dreams are made through Kais and Gerdas of tonight,
their flowers – moondust
eclipsing the broken shells of sky.
i tell you, soar,
as if there was no tomorrow – who knows
if there will be a today.
i see horizon cracking at the edges, burdened with heavy clouds
of rain. cumulative correlation of cumulous clouds.
the very thought is raining on me.
so build your wings, Icarus:
i keep one eye in those clouds to watch over your flight.
as though you might not make it.
Posted in excerpts
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the week is nearly over. again.
and it feels like rain on skin in the heat of summer, raising goosebumps in spite of its warmth.
i never want anything to end.
not even nightmares.
i drag them out carefully, tossing and turning, roasting, like a pig, in my own cold sweat.
i had one every night this week. sometimes two. and i remember. i don’t keep tabs on my subconsiousness because it scares me. the brutality of the mind always scares me. and i dream of death. of death and failure.
y flores. flores para los muertos.
right now, my world is a house made of paper: cards with pretty scribbles on them, where blanche‘s words i lived in a house where dying old women remembered their dead men have more than substance; they have depth to go on and on, revolving in my head.
i’ve seen them from every angle. i swear.
what is it with death?
i’ve always said i have to die before the one i love. i couldn’t stand life otherwise. and i’ve made you promise you won’t die before me. i’ve made you promise me the unthinkable, the unpredictable, the unpromisable.
i did it just because sometimes i just need to know that you won’t die.
Posted in chapters of my life
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glittering soot on her eyelashes 
