Monthly Archives: November 2013

the room is unbearably light. the sun might as well be hanging from the ceiling. everyone is so beautiful here. men with dark halos dangling from their shoulders, all beards and noses and thick hands. women with high cheekbones and long, sweeping necks. feet angled in appreciation of fragile ankles. voices made rugged by stories told in cigarette smoke. i abandon myself in us, with you there and me here, but we never collide.

when i was young i used to bring a pad and paper with me wherever i went. i sat in a corner and scribbled and wrote in silence, while people cooked and moved and whispered around me. i was never asked to set my prized instruments aside. i was surrounded by everyone i loved and loved less or not at all; and no one questioned or wondered what i was doing or why i was doing it. it was what i did. i kept everyone at a distance that was safe but not irreverent, and i knew when to pause to wash my face, to help set the table, to water the geraniums.

i had a grey-eyed friend, then. she was a few short years younger than me, and we frequently found ourselves in the same rooms, with the same people cooking, moving, and whispering around us. we couldn’t relate to each other, but we knew that we eventually would, in our shared memories of one another. many times as i scribbled and wrote, my grey-eyed friend stood behind me and braided my hair. i covered pages upon pages with ink; she carefully gathered my hair, let it fall, and braided it all over again. we understood that we would never have long conversations, but together we kept our solitudes company. it was a beautiful thing.

they were about to nap: him on the couch, her on the armchair. the phone rang twice, and the father picked it up—it was their son. the son wanted to know if he had to invite his uncle, his aunt and his cousins over when they were in town, or if it was fine to meet them for dinner at a restaurant instead. these little details escaped him, and his wife hadn’t a clue. the father told his son of the proper etiquette, and the son was reassured. they had a long history.

there is a man on every street. he is the token drifter, with a head full of hair swaying, his mind elsewhere but squarely there, a bottle in a bag at his feet. he sits on the ledge of a front yard, always the same ledge, among the cats, sometimes looking at the myriads of passersby walking by and passing through, sometimes unaffectedly ignoring them. he is a strange man, but only because we do not know him, and we haven’t stopped to ask.

a friend and i walked by one evening, talking about this but not that. the man was there, sitting on the same ledge, among the same cats. as we passed by him, i heard him say “çirkin kız” and, again, “çirkin”. i couldn’t turn around and catch his eye as my friend and i were talking about this and not that, and i didn’t want her to be offended that his voice had distracted me while hers spoke of important things, things i would later forget. my friend hadn’t noticed the man’s words since her ears were not attuned to them—he spoke in another language; his words could’ve meant anything to anyone, on any street, in any world—but i knew they were meant for us. i paid him no mind, though i handed him all of my spare attention, in the angle of my left ear which i also wished was an eye.

eventually we reached a corner; i made a left and my friend made a right. all this time i had the man’s bait in my pocket; it had stayed with me, and i could finally take it out, to hear, to see. i didn’t know what to make of it. it lay there stripped of its context, with little meaning. how was i to know that çirkin kız wasn’t an insult, but a nazar-proof compliment, a counter-intuitive flattery meant to protect from the evil eye? by calling us the opposite of what we were, he effectively restored a balance that was tipped by the thought of an envy-laden, negatively-charged beautiful. i wondered how easy some have it by not knowing a language, how immune they are to the sight and sounds of others, but also how unfortunate it is that remarks like these—fishing lines of connections—can so easily slip by, catch nothing, and never be thrown again.

story time: government building. compliments on a red velvet case. “are you sure you want both? it drags on the tongue.” i am sure, i say. you would not remove a star from a soldier. think of a lone forbearing soldier under a black sky, opaque and unyielding; that is not a fair trade. the star and the soldier cannot be without one another.

story time: a window on a wall that leads to a hole. there is nothing in the hole, and the window has no pane. you cannot watch the sun rise from this room, but you can watch the sun shine on your fingers. a song pulses and sneaks through the curtains, “here we are tongue-tied, before we collide—” and you narrowly miss it.

story time: around a table. all of your personalities compounded in your mother tongues, and all of your mother tongues wagging in various judgements of character. i make no effort to mingle with you as the need has passed. i am not new to this space. we are all in exodus. no one wants to go back, but i do, i know my part.

story time: i let the silence be, clear and abating; i let it cover me with a warmth that could never compare. when you press your finger on my lips, i swallow all your might and confine it my chest in lieu of a nightingale or two. every day i strive to pluck birds from my ribcage. when i think too much, they do not sing; but i always hope that underneath the skin and behind the bones, their melody pulls through and i find my tongue.

it was an indistinguishable year, a few years ago, when i moved into my new home which would in time become my old home. i was crouching on the bedroom floor, surrounded by worn sheets and paint cans, covering my childhood dresser and bed frame with long red strokes. it was a calming, comforting gesture in a typical sight of boxes half-full and emptied; disjointed furniture waiting to be rearranged; new lives. my smaller cat stepped on the freshly-painted dresser and left a paw mark on the upper right corner, a sign i chose to keep as a reminder of love and levity. it did not take long to paint the furniture, and once all the pieces were dry i set to put them back together.

i could never explain what you were doing there with me in my room that day. you were once good and generous with your hands, but your priorities had shifted. it hadn’t always been this way, of course; there was a time when you could not not have been there. eventually, gradually, as with all things slow and dangerous, you opted for long days and even longer nights with your  favoured puzzle. your presence came to feel foreign to me.

i put the drawers back in the dresser. somehow they stuck together so that every time i opened or closed them, large pieces of paint peeled off and revealed previous layers. i had no desire for the forest greens of my youth. after another piece peeled off, i threw the drawer to the ground and cried out in anger. you stood at the foot of the bed and looked at me. your patience rarely ever faltered, but at that moment you questioned my sanity. how strange your voice sounded. i had almost forgotten you were there.

i suppose it would’ve been easy to lose it then, and i could’ve blamed anything, but it had to be you: you and your foolishly standing there, you and your not understanding of what it really meant for me to scream. i sat defeated across the drawer. as i finally exhaled, our last breath lingered in the room, and i quietly misplaced us—the turbulence of your old you and my new me—in the far corners of a red drawer.

you stretch out your long fingers, tips stained by beets and pomegranates. you paint your insides with the colours it knows best—all deep reds and purple blues. no one questions the morphing of you. a start never anticipates its end; it is too busy beginning, caught in the frenzy of unfolding.

it’s been like this a lot today—nowhere to turn but everywhere, with strange peripheral visions cataloging indescribable scenes.

(i do not run among the trees. there is no bridge to swim under. those high walls are not going to climb themselves.)

how easy it is to mourn the passage of time, regardless of the quality of time lost. i say save your tears, merak etme: we all have a taste for blood.

marguerite est malade car elle a mangé de la—

marguerite was sick because she ate a bit of herself, which turned out to be something else. that’s what i learned about her through her song, a song my mother used to sing to me as a child. the song of sick marguerite was a product of my mother’s youth; it was meant to be refractory but i wasn’t sure how it was possible to substitute a g for a d—the phonetic discrepancy never quite agreed with me. regardless, i played along because i understood the humour and i enjoyed puns, even bad ones; and mostly it warmed my heart to imagine my mother as a mischievous child, singing this song which, by all accounts, was quite vulgar in its time. when i tried to sing and teach it to my friends, they didn’t quite get it. i had to pause and explain the wordplay and its implication. while this need for an explanation validated my original hesitation, it also saddened me that my friends could not move past it and accept the song for what it was, as i had.

le curé labelle, assis sur une poubelle, priait le p’tit jésus en se grattant le—

these infinite loop songs may have been popular in my mother’s youth, or perhaps only with my mother, i wouldn’t know. i assumed there were more than just the one song about sick marguerite, but i only knew of another, the story of curé labelle. there wasn’t much to it. curé labelle (the local priest) was sitting on a trash can and prayed to little jesus while scratching his—and that is where the song cut and started over. i closed my eyes and saw the priest perched on the trash can. in my child mind, the priest donned a dirty grey suit to match the tin of the can, and wore a train cap. he was just a boy with disheveled hair, and his face was dirtied up by coal. he reminded me of martine’s little brother, jean, as dreamed up by marcel marlier and gilbert delahaye in their timeless classic. it made no sense for the priest to be dressed this way and to be of that age, but i couldn’t imagine him differently as i had never stepped into a church and i hadn’t been taught about priest accoutrement. it was also impossible for me to think of a grown man scratching himself on top of a trash can. a naughty little boy made more sense.

in my ultimate vision, marguerite and curé labelle were the very best of friends—they hid and they sought; they caught butterflies; they looked at the stars. on that particular day, marguerite was piqued by freudian curiosity and ate a bit of herself. she fell ill and was quickly bedridden, unable to come out to play. poor little curé labelle sat outside on a trash can, bored and lonely, waiting for her to get better. in a strange scene mingling fiction and reality, i saw my mother and her brothers running in circles around him, taunting him, granting him a physical reality he hadn’t asked for. it was a blasphemous song and i felt bad for little curé labelle, but not for the catholic church.

you hear distant conversations coming from another room; fragments of words that do not echo on walls but are absorbed deep into the recesses instead. you can’t tell what is being said. through notes and inflections you know these are not conversations with people you know, but between strangers who, for a moment, have taken refuge in your living room. every morning the voices rise and fall, but you pay no heed. your ear shifts in vague acknowledgment then seeks out another silence. you know you won’t have much time to finish writing this letter before the credits start rolling.

close your eyes. keep them still underneath your eyelids. part your lips. breathe as you normally wouldn’t. do not let your fingers wander. let the ink dry. do not pick up the pen. leave the page blank. close the door. shut the window. draw the blinds. turn off the lights. do not hide. do not follow the fragrance. let the mercury rise and fall. do not tip the pendulum. gather your notes. undress yourself. turn off the water. let the anchor down. do not ruffle any feathers. keep them close to your skin. beware of your heart. move slowly. avoid the third floorboard. tuck your hair behind your ears. let it fall back to your face. scatter the ashes. make some tea. (very black.) use the good china you do not own. do not let the spoon touch the cup. cross your legs. uncross your arms. place the cup under the window. warm your hands above the steam. let the tea cool down. open your eyes.

it rained. my heart sits heavily on my chest but i haven’t found a better place for it. from my bed i see small raindrops glowing under the balcony ramp. there used to be a tree in the yard, but it is gone now. i don’t know when it left or where it went; i wasn’t there for the farewell. in this space i see walls without windows and shadows of crows and seagulls gliding through the air, leaving elusive marks on the concrete. there is nothing there that shouldn’t be there—flesh and bones mingling, stories from another world.

we have been in this quietness together before. our fingers weren’t laced together; our hands weren’t touching. our minds were separated by my thoughts against yours. i kept a distance from you, and you kept your hand on my thigh. you told me countless things through your lips and from your eyes, but i absorbed only a fraction of them—the weight of our conversation too feathered for me to remember most of it. you wanted to be more of you with more of me, but within several hours you had already lost many of your defining features. (and how beautifully you faded.) the best part was forgetting, i suppose.