Monthly Archives: October 2013

there are days when i think about where i did not go but hoped that i had gone: toward/among. there is a reason for this inaction: being on the outskirts is preferable for the likes of us, as it protects our vulnerabilities. if you are not quite there then you cannot be hurt (or loved); but you can also simply step forward and change the path of stillness to one of movement whenever you feel the urge.

(a moment wherein the urge was felt—)

i met with a stranger. it took a lot of effort for us to be there at that moment, sitting together, meeting. neither of us had anything better to do, and so we did that. sitting there together, meeting, i decided to share a story about storytelling. midway through, i stopped dead in my tracks: the sound of my voice was closing in.

i am startled when, in the midst of talking, i am made aware of my voice. it’s in the way that i am looked at, straight in the eyes, with that vague sense of incomprehension hidden behind a twitch of the iris. when i recognise that look, when i see the effort it takes to register what is being said, i become chiefly aware of my voice, so much so that i lose control over what i am saying, i can no longer make sense of what i am saying, and i catch myself speaking more slowly or stopping altogether. perhaps it’s because rhythm, pitch, texture and form are suddenly taken to heart and closely examined by someone avid of understanding. (it always takes a certain added concentration when common language isn’t shared.) or perhaps it’s because i would prefer not be under such scrutiny, no matter how good the intention.

once the surprise wore off—it took no more than a few seconds—i resumed. i saw myself in the stranger’s smile. i suspect they were going through the same motions. it would have been easier, in that brief moment, to be met with those familiar clouded eyes of inattention. yet there we were: toward/among, in our misunderstanding and subsequent awareness of one another, stepping forward in a land of stillness.

wake up. wake up. it’s almost no longer the morning. it’s the all-time should time of awakening. pressure-bound.

my kidneys are aching. we lost an hour of sunlight. we had to give it back. “thank you for lending it to us,” though really we wished we could’ve kept it. every year we are no better prepared than the last. every year it hits: the inevitability of not only time passing, but time that must trudge through the cold, dark months of fog, drizzle and death. we usually sleep through the hour. we are unaware of the loss until the next day, when something is off, something is not quite right, and the sun sets before we could say goodbye.

would you like to know what you said last night? i wouldn’t expect you to be curious, but i am eager to tell you. something about the language you spoke, the vowels you emphasized, in that in-between state of consciousness and unconsciousness where you whispered your sacred admissions. you spoke through the voice of a teacher, dressed in white, with straps made of twine encircling your torso. you wondered why the blackboard remained free of chalk and dust, and why she wouldn’t move, tied to a chain of her own design. she spoke the same way you did: heavily, in slow, muttered sounds; tales of ruin and loss, confessions from the hollow of her heart.

you hardly recall them in the morning, of course.

the difference this hour makes until it is forgotten.

you’ve come a long way.

it’s in everything you touch. everything that you do not touch, too.

cat hair wasn’t something that amused you. you always inspected pots and pans very thoroughly before you poured your precious olive oil in. you rinsed coffee cups and glasses methodically, sighs escaping from your mouth and spiraling down the drain. inevitably you would find a thin, short black hair peeking solemnly out of your rice. you would pull it away with your fork, nose twitching. i could not have known that cat fur would find its way to your plate, nor that it would bother you with such zeal.

i found evidence of a cat in my books, clothes, pillows and bed, but i always got along with it. it was part of the furniture. my couch and i basked in the warmth of cat hair and raggedy blankets. i, too, have left my hair in clothes, pillows and beds—living on in others’ memories and suspicions until the very last strand. it was not a premeditated evolutionary trick. i never thought much of it until it was brought to my attention.

before you i kept a chaos of a home. in lieu of being a mess, i lived in one. now i am the former, but i keep a clean house.

“is there something you would like to tell me?”

maybe, but i am not sure. this is what will happen: i will tell you something, but it will not mean anything. it will not be in any way connected to my thoughts, as if my mouth couldn’t safely persuade the words to come to my lips and swallowed them whole instead. the exchange will be forgettable, like banalities uttered between strangers waiting in line. there will be a concluding smile, in unison, and you will think nothing of it.

“have you been waiting long?”

i draw lines parallel to the ones you follow, but i ignore the coincidence. i try to write it down on leaves so that it doesn’t leave me, but the pen slips through my fingers. it’s not that my fingers don’t want to hold the pen—it’s more that the pen has a mind of its own, like my mouth. i throw the leaves back to the earth, preferably under the long shadows of a nondescript tree.

“is this where you live?”

if you are asking me if i could be happy here with you looking through the window from outside, at a scene inside, then the answer is yes. there is no need for a door when i see a table, a black pen, stale water, and two people all tangled up like roses made wild by the storm.

when i took your photo, i knew you were once a beautiful child. you flashed a familiar smile, dazzling—the same automatic smile that was expected of you when you were young. you were an only child, the youngest and most precious in a lineage lacking men. grandmothers pinched your cheeks and hoped for the best. you were in everyone’s prayers. you were forgiven by default.

as a grown man, you folded your arms and looked at me straight in the eyes, unknowingly showing me all that there was to you: a little prince. you didn’t want to be seen, but you wanted to be captured. no one had asked that you wear your heart on your sleeve, so you hadn’t, and you were not planning to. this is what made the most sense to you. you only wanted the same pattern of surface recognition, and i knew better than to make a show of you.

i remember us walking down the busy street, me in my bright purple dress, you in your crisp new shirt, sweat under your arms. you preferred that we not be seen together, but the four walls of your home—your box—were insufficient for our purposes.

“everyone is looking at you,” you said.

“it’s because of my dress,” i said.

we walked past people i knew. the bell rang over chess pieces. everything i needed to know about you i learned in that moment: your clouded eyes, your eyebrows as thick as the fog, and the confession in the folds of your mouth.

he had fifteen lifetimes behind him; she had one. i do not know how this was fair.

he met her at the top of an escalator, the weight of his grin teetering on a long black umbrella. he was tall and thin, all angles. it was noon, on the eve of a quiet afternoon—perhaps the quietest they would ever know. rain fell in slow, muted drops, marking the way with an endless procession of disappearing circles. she linked her arm to his with a curious smile, the beauty of self-assurance and youth, and together they walked through the streets. she did not know them yet—the streets, him, her—though she would come to know them very well. in her mind there would be no looking back. this would be the birth of her second lifetime, interwoven and mismatched, oblivious to the thirteen others that would eventually come to trail behind her.