to know fear is to have never tasted it, that bitter acrid taste of rotting apples mixed with strong perfume. there is no knowing, only inhalation and dizziness before the lights go on. then, fear subsides.
the aftertaste remains. cologne is rotting. rotting all the same.
and swallowing the cider bile i stop. and start. i stop and start. and i remember that this was rhythm beaten out for me and Y. aeons ago, i would have told him this was our rhythm, that it was made for us. really, the rhythm is mine alone.
it is the heartbeat of a rabbit caught running in circles, breaking out of a different hole every time. only i have no space of time and who knows if i’m late?
there is no knowing here, only white roses being painted red. but i need no paint, truth always comes out in the end.
and this fear reigns over love. it transcends the borders of us and reproduces in our creations. why is that, will you tell me?
it must be us, the charcoal darkening the paper.
it must be orange juice spilt on a linen cloth. or coffee. coffee on those tiles.
still, it’s so nice to be able taste fear once in a million words, wouldn’t you say?
Posted in chapters of my life
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can you tell me, why de ja vu haunts me like a predator stalking its only surviving prey? the de ja vu, embossed with its frenchness. just like you. just like those kisses you plant on my lips, their buds opening in the middle of the darkest nights, as i wake in cold sweat, clammy hands turning on the lights to chase the demons away.
and i realise, that love is french, italian, dominican. but more than that, it’s foreign to all of us. it’s language – mysterious hum in the early-morning air, it’s lands – unbounded by borders, it’s people waking up every morning, just like the rest of us, seductive scent of coffee in their kitchens, shatter of broken cups imprinting its echo on the windows.
and when i think of love, i think of the mess that coffee would make, drops collecting, puddle spreading with every beat of the heart. my mess.
and it doesnt touch you. you’re not really here. not entirely.
and love doesn’t cut you with its broken china or stain your slippers with instant coffee, fresh those marble tiles.
does it touch you at all?
…
it’s been three months now and i’ve nothing to tell me that i’m yours, only a herbarium of those flowers you bought me the day my mother went to the zoo with my little sister in tow.
only a dead plant, in an envelope somewhere, next to Y’s unopened loveletters and the note that X kissed so that a part of him may remain with me forever, or whatever his reasoning was.
and at night, in somebody’s kitchen, in a land far away, my heartbeat keeps the coffee flowing.
Posted in chapters of my life
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glittering soot on her eyelashes 
