104. they are the answer

the words stand on the page. they sing, jabber, holler; they are the answer.

i’ve often wondered how one finds themselves. last night i promised you that i would look further, deeper; that i would be stronger freer. and yet, i do not know into which chamber, nook or cranny one ought to look.

it’s always been art. and writing.
it’s always been the sashaying silk of kimonos and the pungency of opium-filled dens that jumped out at me from the pages. it was the sexual odour of it, i guess. the implied liberation.
liberté. more often than not, français. how lucky then that you should have french blood coursing through you.

i read so much of writers with insistence upon their refuge in books. it’s been the same for me, albeit i am no writer. i scribble on a page like a child holding the pen for the very first time.

i remember learning to draw. properly. my sunday lessons with an art restorator. i was the youngest there; and the worst. but i’ve always believed it was art that would save me.
i never did learn to hold the pencil properly so that it would fall on the page unrestricted. i promised to myself that i would one day. and that was all. i promised.

97. maybe our stars are falling tonight

time without writing is my form of liberation. it’s forgetting, losing oneself in death of silence. and every time i tell myself i shant succumb to the lustre of words, to their shine in the night, i do. and i drive a wedge between us.
one can’t help these things. 

i learnt to sleep without turning, only to stay in your arms. 
i learnt to entwine my legs around you, to hold you in my eyes; to speak english the way nobody else can, taking you on a magic roundabout with my mouth. 
but my breath is free. it swirls like water in a glass; shakes with the weight of the world; breaks in spasms. it parts my lips warm and freezes. it cannot find nourishment in the cold, it loses its essence. like i.

and i cannot give you what i could have given you. or maybe i’m not enough. maybe i never was. only gods know what it is.

tragedy always happens around this time of year. maybe our stars are falling tonight.  listen to them thump as they break the surface tension of the ocean. then wait until they surface.
if they ever do.

words

words are emptiness
full and languid
deftly swept across a chasm.

we break it –
stale stolen bread for communion;
and drown it in white wine painted red,
where flesh merges with blood
and heart is clogged with lumps of fat.

words are just that.

87. my two plus two

we change. why do we do that? tell me truthfully and without needless words.
i spoke to you in a language you did not understand, in hope that your eyes would tell me what your lips couldn’t. in the end, your hands spoke, holding my flesh as if it were a vessel brimming with the very water of life.

i wonder how and why we have come to this river where the past merges with the future and washes over the present. more importantly, how did i leave Y behind with all his unread letters; and how did you find me amongst all the other grains of sand?

i’ve listened to too many sad songs, heard too many excuses and i spoke to Y on friday. 
completion.
he came out with a gem when i told him that really, i had never lied to him, never told him i’ll be yours forever. he told me that he never lied either. a lie is something that is said with the intention of deceit. clever boy. pah!
i stick to my two plus two: all my past hurt equals you. and i’m thankful.

and between the lapses in translation i’m convinced that nothing matters but me and you and your hands. they will find me all over again.

86. i think she knew

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.