Colliding together with an ungraceful thud. The improbably unconditional love that makes the one moment of reunion worth every other moment of solitude. In the unpoetic atmosphere of the arrival terminal, the departure is but a distant memory that was only ever leading towards the return. Nearly forgotten, as the simple longing for familiarity is satisfied in one embrace. One moment of comfortable sighs. And in the silence of the moment, everything is left behind in the wake of the beauty of just two hands, linked together, with the snug feeling of home.
I cannot breathe.
All this white
They surround me
Click. Shuffle.
You learn to hear every sound when you’re in
Isolation
Oh dear. No no no
Leave me be.
This blackhole pushing through my lungs.
I am not crazy.
Leave me be.
Suck out the life force.
Moans and groans
And textbook tales.
I am not crazy.
I sing songs because I remember
I was eight only yesterday
Time did not pass as swift as you say
Hiss.
I dream.
I dream of those days you told me were true.
But they aren’t real.
They jump like spots missing in the film reel.
And then I realize.
Just stop motion photographs.
That man showed me them.
Last time I saw him… No more gold band around his finger.
Finally given up.
Those crocodile tears don’t fool me.
He is not my husband.
Eight year olds don’t have husbands.
LEAVE ME BE.
There’s always that longing for someone to hold you and say you’re not alone and that you are worthy and that you can make whatever you want and man, will it ever be beautiful. All these strange words that are meaningless because as long as you’re here I’m just here to confuse you. So let me do my job and fill your head with nonsense and wishes because that’s contagious and so is love. I often wonder what it would be like to be in love because I don’t know and I’m a writer and I want to know if only to write about it and share yet another sappy love story for the world to enjoy and cry tears over because everyone has felt alone. I think. And if nothing else, love sells. People love reading about love and relationships they feel they can never have. They can never have that perfection, that so-called utter bliss of having a han to hold come Valentine’s day. Because maybe people think love is what is in cheap paperback romances, or the chick flicks that you watch, and who am I to say? I really don’t know, maybe it is. But as a world with a fascination with love…love just sells.
Drunk and angry in the midday sun
Get out of my country!
Your country you say?
I’ve been here longer than some of the people that
look just like
you.
But you don’t actually care about that.
Does my skin offend you?
Don’t think I don’t see it taking every
Ounce
of being in you
To not give in to thinking we’re terrorists
Oh wait
You still just give in.
Double-take at the security counter.
See
The thing is
If I was to get out of your country
I don’t know where I’d go
See
Your country is my country too.
Asked by thedandelionmovement-deactivate
I will definitely check it out, m’dear! I just saw your post about Asians discriminating against Asians and the same thing upsets me so much too, having been born in a southern Asian country. There, fair skin is considered almost the only type of beautiful, and while people in the Western world are tanning their skin, people are bleaching their skin in Asia. Lovely idea for a blog, I must say!
The cups of coffee, carefully balanced by hands no longer as steady as they used to be. He sits alone—the tremors visible as he reaches out to turn over the newspaper, the same way he did 30 years ago today, though at a very different scene. The kitchen that was once filled with homemade goodness has long since been empty of breakfast smells and smiles and joy. And the old man sits in the corner of a cheap fast-food chain, trying too bring back what was lost, from the recesses of a battered mind.
In the careless manner I retrieve and then abandon this notebook throughout this house, I would not be surprised if someone read these words, despite the level of mortification I feel at such a prospect. Though sometimes regarded as a half-diary for an alter ego or two, these are not secrets. No, they are simply works in progress and perhaps whispers of a sub-conscious in need of psycho-analyzing. Yet, these are still things to be guarded, similarly to secrets.
For someone who, as a general rule, doesn’t make New Year’s resolutions, I’ve been making a great deal. For one, I need to focus more on getting out and doing more with the ticking hours on the clock of my life. I remember a time when I would support a friend without question—the first time they played for worship, or when they were baptized or for a birthday—alone if need be. However, now with the novelty of “firsts” wearing off as days of invitation grow into a lull of repeat occurrences of the self-same no-longer-novel indulgences, disinclination lays heavier and has far greater gravity in the decisions made largely on the factor of incessant indolence.
Is it not, that as writers and readers, we have a most severe, yet undiagnosed case of an overpopulation of alter-egos? I am reluctant to name it “multiple personality disorder” but I often find myself balancing on a knife’s edge into insanity as fiction reigns over my thoughts. Do we not invest ourselves so wholly into the characters of our making and imaginations? Live their lives, feel their fears and loves and hopes? Are we not sometimes their conscience, willing them to do right…no matter how fruitless the endeavour? Therefore, are we not all insane in simply the best possible way?
I fought if only for some part of “history in the making”. Wasn’t that what we all had initially signed up for? Perhaps some of us were here to win the hand of some man in uniform. I wasn’t overcome by such fancies. I was never “thrilled” by the war. And yes, I had great compassion for our soldiers, but to be a part of something bigger than a small rural town beckoned me. Everything combined, a wartime nurse was all I really could be. Help the soldier, stay alive and make history.
Go.
