Monthly Archives: February 2014

sometimes she forgets that he can see. she forgets that he was born with eyes, that he was blessed with able eyesight, and that he is capable of putting his vision to good use. just because his eyes aren’t as sharp as hers does not mean that he is blind to everything around him. when she points toward something and he looks far beyond her directions it is perhaps a blessing more than it is a curse.

***

she was fourteen, and she crossed her legs. she was very feminine, but thought otherwise. one summer, she was sitting on a bench in a metro platform with a boy and another girl. the other girl looked at her and said: you should not cross your legs, it will screw up your back, and i should know, i am a ballet dancer. the girl heard her, but kept her legs crossed. moments before, the boy had been sitting quietly next to her and his knee had touched her leg—it would be the beginning of a wonderful love story between them, and she knew she had to turn a blind eye at the reproof.

i thought i had something for you today, but i don’t. i just assumed that i had, in between conversations and books and other people—but i only had a grey morning, and a nothing in it. i had a wondering where the hell were you, too, but that hardly counts. i had a thought for the road, but it was halfhearted. i could never take a drive, so i thought about the pavement mostly—that was the real thing—but i couldn’t latch on to it; it was too flat, too dull, too burdened with this time that we cannot predict, this time that no one knows.

you are a sad pen. i made sure you were properly aligned for at least twenty-four hours—i kissed you, i tugged on you gently, i sat you upright on the table with your brother, i didn’t leave you alone unless you wanted to—yet unfailingly you refuse to spew your ink out. you are a sad pen inasmuch as your hollowed out brother’s blood persists in escaping, streaming out valiantly on the strength of his last breath. soon he will die, but with your transparent mouth and your heart in a drought it is you who has given up. rest assured, i will prepare white flowers for two.

she sat with a cat. it was brown and black, sweet and unmemorable, sleeping on a rattan chair across from her. she had missed the boat by a minute, or maybe thirty seconds—it was sounding its horn and leaving the dock when she had turned the corner, a minute or thirty seconds earlier. there was a slight fog that day, though it hadn’t been as thick as the day before, a day where you couldn’t see further than the end of your nose, a day where you only cared about your eyes. she wished she could blame the fog for missing the boat, but she did no such thing, as it was not that kind of fog, and it was not that kind of day.

the air was warm and humid, and as the boat left without her, she saw the cat sleeping on a rattan chair by an empty table. she joined the cat though it had not invited her, and for a moment she wondered whether she should order coffee to justify sitting there for the nineteen and a half minutes that separated her from the next boat. she looked away, and as her eyes moved with the waves, an obscured sun cast stars on the water. she did nothing—something she was familiar with—something that would save her the trouble of making up her mind.

she waited for the boat, she looked at the water and at the fog; she sat with the sleeping cat, until a man came and, without a word, scooped it up in front of her. the man didn’t seem to know how to hold the cat, but he was no stranger to it. as he adjusted his arms and his hands around its brown and black fur, she saw the cat’s swollen belly full of kittens. the man disappeared into the building next door, the store of a pharmacist. the cat barely woke up.

the rattan chair now lay empty, yet still she sat waiting for the boat, looking at the water and at the fog. she had fifteen more minutes to spare before the next boat would arrive, and as the obscured sun cast stars on the water, she wondered if there was a rattan chair waiting inside the store, a rattan chair for this sleeping cat that was swept away before her eyes while she sat, waiting for the boat.

you keep a small tin box. not for mints, not for chocolates. you put other things in it, things that you remove and steadily replace with other things. there are no strings tying the objects together—what they have in common is the light metal vessel in which they lay, for a while, though not together.

it is not so much the objects that you seek, but the memory they leave behind. you keep this tin box for the ghosts of familiar things. you somehow prefer their shadows to their actual curves and textures. the box is an old home, an abandoned park, a gallery of white walls hosting the people passing through your life in single-file processions. every corner of the box has limitless possibilities of shadows within it as you substitute the objects that inhabit it. small wooden horses, dried white rose petals, trick dices, half-burnt matches, clock arms, saucers without cups come and go with a blink and with a sigh, as you blink and as you sigh.

(and you will blink and you will sigh.)

with your small tin box, you know you are not entirely gone—only quiet (always), uncertain (certainly), falling behind, shooting stars and catching some, until their trail flickers out.

i went to the kitchen and i threw things out. pieces of broken plates and broken wine glasses—i kept those. i don’t know why. i’d been keeping them for days, for rainy days, for better days anyhow. i could fill a silence with them. only they sat there, in the kitchen, losing their luster, gathering dust, until i forgot about the days, until i knew the days would never come. i threw them out.

adieu tristesse
bonjour tristesse
tu es inscrite dans les lignes du plafond
tu es inscrite dans les yeux que j’aime
tu n’es pas tout à fait la misère,
car les lèvres les plus pauvres te dénoncent
par un sourire
bonjour tristesse
amour des corps aimables
puissance de l’amour
dont l’amabilité surgit
comme un monstre sans corps
tête désappointée
tristesse beau visage.

(éluard)

my skin: the vessel that binds all the pieces together. but every day a part of me goes—hair pulled from a comb, nails clipped, cells washed away with the kohl.

***

the night before, as you fell asleep,

one ragged dress. sleeves sliding off your shoulders, down your arms. with a gentle pull at the waist it slips over your hips and to the floor where it gathers at your feet. you could step out of the pool of lace and silk and thorns, but you look at it and it reminds you of all your sinking feelings, piling up. you are a statue of skin cast in composites and aged to a familiar off-white; the ragged dress holds you firmly to the ground.

if you step over of the ragged dress, you acknowledge the body in front of you. you give it the okay. you move forward to a union of skin and nails and mouths and hair and pearls dangling precariously on fragile collarbones. if you step over the ragged dress and reveal your ankles and your toes, you fall into an accident. you topple over into the hands that let it slide off your shoulders, down your arms, over your hips, and at your feet. if you step over the ragged dress, you become a ghost without a shell, sprouting the leaves of your unbecoming. and so you pause in the mirror, for the love of two bodies and one ragged dress in between—it’s not like any words were about to come out of your mouth.

as you wake up the sun is already halfway through the sky and ready to hand it over to the moon. it is a timely game of tag that the two go through every day, and when the moon is but a sliver in the sky the sun struggles to catch her hand.

dream: approached, planted, decamped.
spontaneously sang break on through.
woke up on the other side, of course.

we lock our doors. we let things run. if we could wrap it around our necks (this softest fur, this live animal) we wouldn’t need to stop.

***

she never knew what her name meant. she could easily be called upon by the gesture of a hand, or by an indistinguishable grunt. she was born, and then she would die—this is the certainty that kept her there. she was spared the worry, and she never learned to run. her greatest achievement was a carefully mastered detachment which afforded her all the mercy she would ever need. she kept her muscles soft, and as they coated her with that snug, cushy warmth, she could almost feel her mind expire.

she was drawn to stillness. she often stood anchored in the middle of a moving swarm—an intimate pleasure she could share with no one. she had long hair, forgettable waves in an ocean of chestnut, amber and honey. she loved how it flew out, storming among the flutter of all these strangers. she was not waiting so much as she was set on not acknowledging the quickness of the sand escaping through her hands. she always kept a bit of the earth in her pockets. she knew when to take some of it out, when to let it run between her fingers, when to leave a trail behind.

no one noticed her there, nor did they notice the trail. she saw life as nothing more than a minor note, something she only vaguely participated in on account of her patient, beating heart. she would never let herself die, and she would never let herself live, either; she greeted the world in stasis, caught in a wild wind, and that is how she would also say goodbye.