broken families, no matter what anyone does, always feel broken

how long does it take to forget? what does it take to finally be able to say we've moved on? i see your message on the screen, bridging the seas and vast tracts of land separating us. and even through the distance, i feel my body tense with uncertainty. what do i say? how do i convince myself that i feel hardly anything at this possibility of contact? i cringe at the thought that you are real. i shudder at the realization that it was only i who denied your existence.

but what would you have me do? i am torn. i am broken. i am lost and you have been shattered. shattered into the tiniest fragments that memory has allowed. shattered and scattered across time, across space that i will not occupy. i've forgotten you. i don't remember how it felt to have once been complete. i plead for the mercy of forgetting you. i beg for reprieve from a litany of words threatening to make me long for what has long been dead. when will you let me go? when will you allow me to forget you?

it has been too long and yet you've brought it all back with just one word.

missing you, i wonder how you look now,
wonder if you still do that little habit with your fingers

i remember you as if it was only yesterday
and realize it is only in yesterday that i have the courage to remember.

when sunrise is still a dream

The night hosts a sea of darkness as we hide in the pause of our prolonged purgatory. Resting place of the weary. Haunting grounds of waiting souls.

"Are you cold?", you ask, straining to sit closer.

"Not at all," I whisper knowing no sound will bridge the barren space around you.

(It must have been so hard for you. We were so unhappy. )
Tears course down your soft cheeks. What can I do but hold you?

"I'm happy. I've always been so happy."

And the night watches, cradling my lies, forgiving me my inconsistencies.

why mornings are so cruel

day 1

He woke up. Frying pans. Plates. Egg. Rice. It has begun. And he watched the steam, rising from his still warm coffee, brew war.

"Did I get the eggs right?"
A nod of acknowledgement with the clatter of spoon and fork.

٭

day 2

The whisper of a name yanks him from a cocoon of dreamlessness. Palpitations. Voiceless cursing. Humidity of new day. And only a dim awareness of droplets of sweat persisting, forming, nagging and winning.

"Hush now. You've just been dreaming."

A hand running through bedraggled hair with the resounding drop of a head on the pillow.

٭

day 3

There is nothing but his eyes flutter open. Sleep chased away. Weight. And there is nothing more painful than having to peel off covers wrapped around, stuck tight to the skin.

“It’s there today.”

Not even a stare with the rustle of the broadsheet’s pages to the obituaries.

٭

day 4

He is awake and watches dawn shatter through the blinds, conquering the empty room. Troubled breathing. Dark circles under bloodshot eyes. And he waits.

“Are you ready?”

A black pin placed over his heart with the assent of silence.

٭

day 5

He woke up. Frying pans. Plates. Egg. Rice. It will continue. And he watched the steam rising from his still warm coffee brew war.

first meetings

In the beginning, there was only the spark of something, barely an inkling of familiarity, and only a sense of a rather awkward hesitation. There never arose a need to act. For action would, in its typically vulgar manner, destroy the anticipation cleverly hidden in our brief and tight-lipped encounters.

Polite conversation. A brief nod. Perhaps a small smile every now and again. A clever story about common friends if luck allowed. Supressed glances. The fanning of cheeks that have become much too affected. Pleasantries. An indescribable attraction to describing the weather. And the widening gap that lingers in between.

Because at the very start of everything, there is only the turning over of possibilities in the presence of famished silence.

content

Maybe it's something as simple as eating ice cream on a bench together. With the still night sky not being particularly clear and a patient moon not seeming at all that extraordinary. A plain evening with all its routines and customary bothers. No soft music or dimmed candlelights. No traces of roses or promises of a stolen kiss. No furtive glances or increased heart rates. Nothing at all. Just ice cream and being together.

I've spent the better part of a month aching to post here and now that I finally have the chance to do it, I have nothing to say. *sighs* So much for that.

----------Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!----------

midnight

the radiance hidden in the locks of your hair

tumble across your shoulders,

spill over and across your silent frame,

rise with the steady cadence of your breathing.

in awkward leaps, my heart traverses the barrenness

separating my being from your own,

stretching across the contours of your figure,

moving in rapture with the new knowledge of your touch

at the beck of sinuous magic entwined in this wordless worship,

this homage to the sacred temple of your soul,

the unseen boundaries veiling my purpose waver

and i lie, once more, in perfect surrender at the center of your existence

When there is simply

the primal urge

to write,

the desire

without the forms it is wont to come in,

words become

inadequate

and the medium that they travel in

becomes nothing more than a

v____a__________s______________t

UNCONQUERABLE

emptiness.

a tribute to lost love

There was a beginning, not so long ago. But as is wont to happen in stories of love begun, lost, found, and lost again, there is nothing left except the confines of the ending. There is nothing to dwell upon but the finality of the void. And all that is there to recount is the sound of an unreachable sea in the walls of an empty (and alas, it is oh so empty) shell.

Our memories were buried in a nameless grave. And it was the dead, amongst which the casket resided, who bore witness to the regrets. And although we promised not to, the earth atop the site shows that the vestiges of our past had been exhumed and examined. More than once, the handiwork of such a terrible task was not my own. But the violent flow of secrets hidden deep in the earth's core is irrelevant. Who she is, who she was, continues to haunt me in the depths of my desperate soul.

She was the warmth. That much I remember. Of the two seasons I have had in my life. She was the warmth. She was MY warmth. Perhaps that is the only way to describe her. Perhaps this is the way I wish to forget. Through the slow and laboured process of losing the picture of her face and her smile. Through the deliberate unlearning of her touch.

With the reminiscing of our story, the frost of winter has now come at the threshold of my sanctuary. And with its violation upon my essence, I seek the heat of a heart that has long been lost to me. What do the reasons matter? The dates? The times? The names? The mind is not so great that it can hold on to such trifles as these when it is overwhelmed by the one irretrievable fact: She is gone. There is nothing now but a world of twilight and ice.

_ _ _ _ _

. Was it so long ago
when you last held my hand,
stroked my hair,
said my name out loud?

.. Were you so lost to me, not noticing,
when I last searched for you
in a crowd,
in my heart,
in all that I have allowed to define me?

... Was it so painful
That i can't find my way back
to you who does not want me?
and i tread on in an outpouring of "if only's"



This isn't a work of poetry. They're just thoughts. Pipe dreams. Words for someone who will never read them. And if he happens to find his way here, someone who will never understand just how close he got.