My dark man. (3)

We sat there at a distance, both missing each other. We could’ve just turned to face one another and talk. We could’ve just talked.

It’s that same place again, and that same part of nighttime where everything feels stitched to something deeper and more calm. We are sitting together: he on the log, and I on a rock. Spread wide above us are the skies, innumerable stars glistening on their soft sheets. The air is cool. I can’t describe how it smells or feels, but I know. It’s the kind of moment one wants to seize, literally freeze. It’s not when you want to think about how time is passing. Because time is not passing. It shouldn’t, now, should it?

I tell myself that you won’t leave. But I know it means nothing. And it is with this thought that the weight of our silence starts becoming torturous. It feels as though someone placed a spiky wire on my bare skin, trailing it down. As it touches my chest, I draw in a quick breath: it has a connection with the void within me. I look at you and you are staring ahead somewhere, aloof, in a world that your eyes see and I cannot reach. And then I realize how you have no idea about my world either. We are equally separated.

We: You and I, the stories yet to complete. I think we are ever-living because of what we have in us. Even though we each carry Words from contrasting entities, we are still what we are for us.

“Tell me one last time, will the sun come?”

“It will,” you say. I think I will then stay for a moment. Until the sun arrives, at least. The log is empty at your side now. I will walk to it and sit there. To feel that warmth again and not shiver. I have wrapped my shoulders around myself. Perhaps the wire will forget to hurt, too. Maybe it will turn into a spring of soothing water if it hits my heart enough times.
Voids are colorless but they are vulnerable to scars that birthed them. I can still hear your footsteps from ten minutes ago. Was it ten minutes ago that you left, or has a century passed already? Oh but the sun, yes, it will come.

Our goodbye was wordless. I think we will meet again.

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2014

“I did not want to be what I have become. But I like it now… It suits me. I feel I am where I belong. It is Real. It is Me.”I was sitting before him on the road and there was no one else around. When he said these words, I looked at him. I wanted more answers, and I was searching for them in his eyes. They are windows to your soul, after all, but somehow his soul was a locked corridor now– the key to which was unknown to even himself, I suppose.  Read more

2015

“You don’t know how it’s like to be what you are not.”

“I sure do. I have known you for so long and never uttered a word about you. That is the same thing in a way, if you see.”

He turned his head. I stood at a distance from his seat: a log placed in the middle of the road. An empty road– our secret place.

“No,” he whispered. “You cannot see the sea in me. You can only see the waves.”

“I can see the sea,” said I. Then taking his name, I continued: “And I can also sense a storm. Please confide in me now, let it crash me down if it so must. Break me because I need you.”  Read more

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(Like the previous two times, this had to be the way it is, too. The first time I wrote it, I was having a problem putting words properly but hoped it would make sense.  It’s of course the same now.)

 

If they find you.

“There is more and more I tell no one…”
~Jane Hirshfield

There is more and more I tell no one. It kills me how I’m dying.

You came to see me two months ago and I have been missing you ever since. Every morning, as soon as I wake up, I make a prayer for you to be there and then I open my eyes. Slowly. Expectantly. But then you’re never here. Nobody is. And you know, that always makes me smile. Because hope never tires, does it?
(It’s embarrassing too, to think what I have become, but I cannot just help it. I am waiting for you to show up.)

The doctors told me yesterday I haven’t got much time remaining on my hands. I said to them, thank you. I thought they did this so I could develop an understanding of my case and accept what was going to happen to me. One of them sighed and came closer to my bed, put his hand on my forehead and gently asked me if there was someone I would like to call. Oh, now I get it, I remember thinking. They want to know if I’m truly that lonely or if there might be just someone out there who would take care of my funerary customs and claim their relation maybe. Could someone like me be just that alone? All alone?

Yes, I wanted to say. I would very much like to see him. I am yearning to see him. If his image could be my last image and his scent my last scent, I wouldn’t want anything else in the world to say I died happy. But I cannot die happy. You are not here and you won’t come even if I ask them to tell you everything; that I’m dying in a few days, that I’m sorry, terribly sorry; because that is what I deserve. I deserve this, I do. I have damaged a lot of lives. I cannot change things back. I am learning everything here in this room–this hospital room– but I think I’ve gotten too late for lessons this time. It’s of no use.

If they somehow still find you please be kind enough to bury me with your forgiveness.

–

Ghosts of our love.

I make the world’s best coffee.
I know this because you said it.
You said it because you meant it.
You meant it because you loved me.
You loved me why?

I stand here in my house – once what meant “home” – and shiver like a leaf
Because the enormity of this place seems terrifying without you and I feel I can’t do without my roots.

Walls shake as your laughter echoes, the defenses I had made come crumbling down
I can no more understand where to look for you – or not to – as my feet take me running round and round

My ears are ringing now with a voice that isn’t yours, my vision blurs with something that should be tears
My mind is on fire and my heart in a sea, and my room and its clock and its bed and its floor
And your pen and your shirt and your watch and your sheets
And your smiles and your eyes, and your eyes, and your eyes.

Then you come and hold me – out of where?
Whisper something soothing like a prayer;
Running your fingers through my hair, you hold my gaze and say: “darling, please take care”

I listen to you and sit down.
Cross my legs, bend my head, begin to count.
I notice that my breathing calms and the knots in my body do unknot
As your scent enters into me and your soul takes a spot.

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