indedom

Nothing does not remind me of you.
When you were around,
I saw everything for the first time.

Towards the time and the unknown place/ where we shall know/ what it is to arrive

Macneice (sort of)

Time was away
when he was here
then life no longer
what it was

a ghost’s promise

This promise is a bird
I am caging in my bones.
I am denying it the freedom
to soar over heights bound
to exhaust its determination.
Promises are the most fragile
of birds to ever roam the Earth.
Breathing wordwings bringing them
to life, they leap off our lips,
flying too far and fast for us
to not forget their colour nor
their shape when we held them captive.
Promises too are such wondrous
creatures in flight. And this world
that has issues with beauty
running wild just can’t wait
to see their annihilation. It watches
and cheers the one man hunt, who
with a stone, arrow or gun
breaks his promises to their bones, to
fountains of feathers like fireworks
gone the next second. I am all
for freedom. But not of the blind
kind. So my ribs will cage this bird
promise with the other beating flesh
imprisoned between. Because
I see now that it is not just
a figure of speech: keeping a promise
quite literally means,
to yourself, deep within.

-

For H, on the 137th day since I last saw your face. Tu me manques, mon ami.

Last one.

The human hand can draw coastlines to set the boundaries distinguishing one Ocean from the next, but the water in it will flow in all direction to whichever shore it pleases nonetheless. So read or even write all the practical guide to Love there is or could possibly be. But Love, to an equal extent if not more than the Ocean, was never meant to be mapped out.

A love that is divine is limited only by the boundaries drawn by the hands of God. But I can’t think of any religion in which God drew any.

I realise now that your first and last love will always be the same person. Because Love is patient, first of all. And only when you’ve learned how to love patiently can you truly say you’ve loved for the first time. Such a love perseveres so your first love becomes your last.

In this ocean, too, there is no beginning and end.

I was swallowed by the Ocean to the point of no return, not because of helplessness, but because of choice. In the darkness there is a different light that illuminates the million wondrous creatures the feeble mind could scarcely imagine.

a non-exhaustive list of the things I want

I want a new laptop to replace my ancient macbook that lasts literally 10 minutes when it’s not plugged into a power source.
It is so that I can do what my duty as a student calls for me to do while lying on the grass at Botanic Gardens where you and I ran under my shawl one rainy afternoon.

I wish more than that to not have to do the things that my duty as a student calls for me to do so that I would have the time to write more about the things I really want to do, one of which is to make you proud that I am doing the latter which you never once doubted would make me happier.

I want to be able to stop holding on to the things people say would make life worth living but have failed to deliver on their promises up till now. I want to let go. And find that things are still all right. And that you are still here, or there - it does not matter where (home is where the heart is). And if you aren’t, the hope that you will.

I want to be able to live to a hundred years old, now, though I used to say forty is enough. I do not mind. If it will be your skin that mine would graze at night. I want to be able to tell our story using Hemingway’s words, wise man, bless him. “We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.”

Although I do not mind being rich as well, but it has to be wealth that can last at least three generations. Then my children would not have to go to school, and learn poetry, history and philosophy instead. And how to be good humans, all their lives.

I want to stop daydreaming and have someone slap some reality into me. I want that someone to be you.

I want to be ok with daydreaming, otherwise.

I remember those times when I wished people would not ask me to hang out unless I ask them first because I felt the pressure of actually having to make time for someone. I never wanted to commit to anything because I wanted to live each day depending on my momentary impulses - which really just ended up in my sleeping most days away when I am not doing anything. These days though I wish I had more energy for everyone in my life. I wish every soul I meet would take something out of me because one of the most important things that your coming in my life (and the eventual abandonment) has taught me is how immense (and how immensely more beautiful) are the things that replace the ones you stop holding on to and let to be taken away from you.

Whoever thought one shooting star can cause one to go blind

It is when I miss you that I find it hard to believe that I am a 44kg 159cm tall woman. It seems impossible that a tiny person like me can feel so much emptiness in my gut (is it even possible to feel emptiness? the bigger it is the greater your capacity to feel it - or the other way around? I do not know the answer.) There are moments in the day when I would suddenly see you walking towards me from afar and I would stop and wait until that little voice inside my head whispering that such a kismet is beyond impossible can no longer be pushed by my eardrums which initially refused to listen. But that moment, lasting for a few countable seconds (in the strict sense of counting seconds), is like a capsule that I swallow and let break within to fill me with all the joy that it contains until every cell in my body imprisons a memory (real or made-up) of you. When I break away from the reverie I realise that it is actually possible to carry the entire cosmic universe at the pit of my stomach because that’s how vast the void is: impenetrable, inaccessible, irremediable - because just how does one even attempt to fill a chasm that deep? One doesn’t. One simply waits for the day when one’s favourite star is born again out of another heavenly explosion regardless of how many millions of light years it may take.