Stop. Start. Stop.

It felt like being left open on an operating table.

The surgeon was precise, calm, calculating.

From the first incision,

Scalpel to skin.

He would look into my eyes and reassure,

Every layer was gold, or dirt leading to gold. I do not remember which, but the thought that there was gold in me felt good… really good

Hindsight says I was more like an onion. Or better still, a candle; burning out. Slowly.

The surgeon was somewhat distant.

Reminding me that he was just a surgeon.

There was nothing more.

And he would only be around for a short while.

But how do you not think more of someone taking off the shield of your skin,

Digging to the gold of your heart.

And truly, I may have been burning, but candles are pretty.

So pretty...

He was so pretty, and he smelt… oh, he smelt of heaven.

If we could smell heaven.

Now I realize he smelt of heaven probably because I was dying.

And candles, with their flame and their glorious scent. You do not realize they are dying; burning out.  Slowly.

And he was a paradise kind of afterlife.

A light I would willingly walk into.

Hindsight says I was the light.

He was just a mirror; a window.

So I left my light and walked into my reflection I saw in his eyes.

Thinking he was the light, my light.

But the thing about windows is that they are empty.

It is a glass designed to show you a reflection of yourself and the world at a glance.

But you smash through  it and there is no soul behind.

It’s empty, and cold.

So I left my light and walked into what heaven must smell like and look like and taste like. And when I hit against the window.

Damn.

Fire and cold do not marry well.

They clash like thunder. Leaving behind a bitter kind of destruction.

It was like being left open on an operating table.

And when he reached the core of what he was digging for.

When the walls came down.

Like a beating heart in a baby’s hands,

It slipped,

Fell,

Cracked.

Did he forget that he was holding gold?

I do not know exactly what happened after that.

But after he left,

It felt like what I imagine being left open on an operating table would feel like; denuding.

My insides were cold and dwindling.

Gold and warmth;

Stopping

Starting

And stopping again.

...

I invest too  much.

I care to the boiling point of damage.

I often crave for a time in which I am unaware of the past, present and future.

I crave for the lightness that comes with oblivion.

But to never feel is to never live.

As to live without feeling is to never experience the inebriating ebullience that resides in the corners of life.

So I must be unafraid of the dark.

Of the often understated suffering that comes with the loss of someone still living.

"...to love is to stand naked"

Vacant Houses

"They told me that this is what I should do."

"Who told you?"

"They told me this is what you do when you loose someone you love. They said you come to therapy. They said you would be sad. They said you will wait to hear his voice. Or see his call light up your phone. But it will never happen. They said it will be crushing, and I will want to go. But I will get past that stage. That after a while, I will become scared of forgetting; what he sounded like, the melody of his laughter, the character of his existence. They told me I will be scared that it will all slip away. That at some point I will only have faint actual memories but very real emotions. I will remember how it felt but not what it looked like. They gave me the map and told me where to walk. I think I am in the part where I should want to go. The part that I cry or hold back tears and wait for my phone to ring."

"Who is this 'they'"?

"But that is not why I am here, the reason I am here is because I heard yesterday, that I was cold. He said; 'who made you this cold?'"

"Who is he?"

"My ex-boyfriend, it was in high school. I ran into him yesterday. He didn't know I had just lost him. So he didn't have that pity in his eyes that everyone has now, kind of like the look you had in your eyes before I started to speak."

"I do not pity you, I am here..."

"Do I seem cold to you?"

"I do not..."

"Because he said it and... I remembered what I was like with him. It was easy. I was "in love" with him, and it was easy. It was the kind of love that these 'mature' fools say 'what do they know about love?' to. Because it was easy and they did not believe nor understand how love could be happy or easy or light. They did not believe that a word built on a feeling of utter joy should be easy. Why? Why would you discredit my love because it is not as corrosive as yours?"

"..."

"But I do not love him. I feel like I do not love anyone. I feel like a vacant house, like someone came in and turned all my lights off. I feel like darkness. Have you ever felt like darkness? It is a feeling that makes you not want to see the sun in the morning. Is that what they meant by I will want to go? Because I do not want to go anywhere, I do not want to die. I just do not want to see the sun. My sadness is boring. I do not have nightmares. I do not wake up panting or looking for someone to call. A friend or pastor maybe? I do not. I am just... bland, and I want to sleep or be unconscious all the time. Because it is familiar, like going back home for some hours."

"..."

"You are nodding your head. Are there no words in your mouth? Or have you realised that I did not come here for therapy, I just came to talk. Or maybe that is the therapy, paying someone to listen to you, because you feel like a child suffocating on the side of the road and no one can hear you scream. Is that why people come here?"

"People have diff..."

"I am sorry, I haven't spoken this much in a very long time. Not since he was alive, which was about 7 months ago."

"What happened?"

"Hm, the short story is that he was 6 and I was 5. Not in age, in everything else. He would get the first notice, I was an after thought. A piece of an already completed puzzle, not that I minded, he was a big piece that completed my puzzle.

But that day I got the call from the clinic. The day I had seen him earlier with someone else, there was no feeling. There was no shattering. My heart, my world, my mind was excruciatingly silent. That was the day my lights were turned off

That moment that should have changed everything.

In that moment that this man I had taken to the presence of God, the one I had vowed to my creator to spend the rest of my life with, was now right in front of my car, kissing another woman in the middle of the a sidewalk. He was obviously not aware that I was watching or did not care?

Anyways, if there was ever a moment, that was the one. That was the moment I should have erupted, for someone who had erupted about much smaller things. For someone who had been refereed to as a ticking grenade. That was the time to explode.

But there was something about this.

This kind of pain, or shame?

There was something muting about it.

So I did not say a thing.

I did not move, my face felt like it was made of steel.

I did not wipe the tears welling up in my eyes. I just kept driving towards them. I do not know if it was on purpose or not but I drove home afterwards and got ready to confess to the police, or whoever it was that may have seen me. That was when I wanted to go, not now.

So when the clinic called, the phone ringing loudly from the kitchen.

I sat on a chair next to the dinning table, my face as still as before, watching a picture from my wedding day that hung on the wall above the TV.

Everything, every feeling with this man, every smile, intimacy, laughter, every moment. It was all a kind of mockery now."

"They said I am cold. But I do not know if I would rather be cold than have the burden of emotion.

Because I have learned that erotic love is like a catapult. There is only so far it can stretch before it comes back with a sting that turns all your lights... off."

Your eyes.

It feels like I could possibly change the world
Your world..

When I am with you.
When you look at me those eyes.

It feels like the littlest things about me could possibly change your world.

It's in the intricacy of your attention.
The way your eyes trail my cheekbones as they rise with a smile or fall after a long day.
The way you trail the story of my words, lining them with relentless assurance.

It's the incredulous feeling of you being incessantly in love with the musings of my mind.

It's in the lightness,
The feeling of being a child again when I am with you.

The swelling of self,

This newly found confidence.

This absence of calculation,

This comfort in our silences

The flexibility of your affection.

It's all in your eyes,

And when I speak...

About my day or an idea I just had.

The intricacy of your love,
Your smile,
Your eyes,
Oh, your magical eyes...
They wrap around me.

....And it feels like I could possibly change the world.  : )

...

Because my mind is a stopwatch when I am with you.
And it is so overwhelming that I do not see your face. I only see the minutes running away from us.


Because all we have is time.

Fast paced, suffocating, time.

And it is incredibly difficult to fit all my love for you into something so fickle.

How do I keep you forever?

10,000th.

Sitting here, I often feel like I have no people. 

Like I have been dropped into a place and left alone. 

And the people in this new place are cold as snow. 

But then when I look back, 

It only takes a picture or a call or a text or even a voice mail.

As soon as I get a glimpse of the people behind me.

The quality of the people propping me up. 

The architecture of support around me;

Infinitely stronger than the frigidity before me.

I remember that I am not alone.

I sit here, 

A small girl in an over sized chair.

And that is all you see.

You do not see the 10,000 people I come with, cheering me on, saying;

"You can do this,"

"Forgive yourself,"

"Try again."

Thank God for these 10,000 people :)


Inspired by a line from Maya Angelou's "Our Grandmothers" and my day today.
Thanks Ugose for making me put this up :)

Fantasy and Reality

He was a one dimensional guy.

She was a gathering of stories.

And they would clash, time and time again.

At the line between fantasy and reality.

She was an emerging hurricane.

A collection of aftershocks.

He was a one sided coin.

Stuck to the top of a mountain.

All he saw, was the sun.

It must be nice to not house a museum of caustic nostalgia in the veins of your mind.

It must be nice, 

To only see the sun.