restless

it took me a week, only a week, for me to fill my thoughts with imaginings and possibilities and now my illusions are shattered and i'm in that dark space with no window, wondering why and wherefore and when.

i am so, so tired of pushing all opportunity away. empty temptation.

deja vu

so i spent fifteen minutes on that grassy bank i know so well, on a day of october indian summer. thinking of people and happenings from that year of discovery. the blue of the sky, the red of the leaves overhead, the green of the grass, the silhouettes of the modern brick buildings behind me, they were all the same.

so easy to slip back into the past.

and one face kept returning to me, the face of that boy who leapt through his room window to join me on the grass one summer evening. i can still hear the crunching of his shoes on the red pebbles and see the sun catching the gold lights in his eyes and hair.

and so we sat side by side on the grass and talked of nothing in particular, when there was so much to say, there was more to our year than that, there was more that is now forgotten.

but i'll always remember that sunset on the green grass on a bright day in the north.

reflections on travel, the first

airports are exciting places, but so, so lonely

all those people rushing away, some with tearstained cheeks and the memory of a last hand-clasp reflected in their eyes. some with glad anticipation rushing towards the unknown, not knowing that when they return everything will have changed, everyone will have moved out of sync

and they will spend days wondering where it all went, in that interval between the flickering of the departure boards.

and some coming back to the one place on earth where time stands still; for a few fleeting moments, their happiness radiates through the frenetic jumble of sound and human activity and you stand there in that wide open cacophonous space, wondering how they got to that place and whether you and your luggage trolley will ever arrive in that magical destination that appears on no man-made departure boards.

the word nerd

some frabjously satisfying, juicy and descriptive words that i must write down here before i forget!!

Rantipole: a wild, romping young person

Sparadrap: a cloth, coated in ointment and used as a bandage

Limicolous: living in mud

Grume: a thick, viscous or clotted liquid, especially blood

Flemensfirth: the entertainment of fugitives

Frendent: gnashing the teeth

say them out loud, roll them around in your mouth, close your eyes and capture the not-always-pleasing images they evoke. :P

in the morning

today i am comfortably, calmly, happy. temporarily content, the to-do list tucked away neatly in a brain-drawer for once. and the thought that i can leave this sterile cell of fluorescent strip lighting and orderly clutter at noon is a comforting one.
sometimes i think i let people push me to do far too much. i'm too often caught up in a world of others' making, their motivations, their thoughts, their desires guiding me. and this need-to-please that i never really grew out of is far too easily called to the fore.

razorlight:
in the morning, you know you won't remember a thing
in the morning, you know it's gonna be all right

do you remember shouting the words to that song, in that blue basement space filled with kaleidoscopic lights strange accents heady rhythms shot glasses kisses in hidden corners and the exhilaration of three o'clock in the morning in high heels?

reunion

i am always doubtful about seeing you; wondering what emotion this meeting might evoke, if any; it's safer by far not to see you, or if i must, to see you in the company of others; their voices, their laughter like insulation, filling in the spaces across which our eyes meet, guarding us (or is it just me?) from the danger of falling through the cracks into an alternate reality where your fingers might brush past mine. for those few seconds, the promise that hung over the shadow and silence of that confessional night might have become real. and i would not have been able to forget.

i hardly think of you now, really. i hope that's true. i hope that that name that springs to my lips in unguarded moments doesn't betray me. i hope that you have become a habit instead of a possibility.

sand.

all i remember is sand, sand between your fingers and my shoulder, a gritty layer overlying the warmth beneath, so that you never really touched me.

sand between our toes one evening as the sun set behind us, sand on which i lay that night when you came to me. your voice in my ear, weaving nets of temptation and potential.

cool sand between the woven mat and my body, a light sheen of sweat; it was a warm night. and your eyes dark in the dim firelight as i wondered if this was surrender.

your hair the colour of wet sand in the morning after the tide goes out, the colour of sand in a glass; one turn, and those grains that lay together for a few lifetimes in some languages, a few breathless moments in others, they all shift, sundered by a mere hour's passing. then they fall into innumerable permutations of innumerable combinations, perhaps no two grains of sand to ever meet again in all the turnings of that glass.

retrospective

it generally takes me about a year, from a lingering look across a room, to conversations that you remember every scrap of. answers you parse and re-analyse, and sudden bloomings of the heart at a perceived response. and through it all i fight myself.

there weren't many of them, these guilty secrets. weaknesses i would rather die than reveal. yet the keeping them almost tore me apart.

soon it will be a year. i hope that i can leave it behind, like those dusty bags in the lost luggage rooms in hundreds of railway stations
airports
bus stations
packed full of memories meaningless without their owners
objects purposeless without the lives that gave them consequence.

but you gave me something that i hope will last, and i hope that perhaps, in my own lesser way, i have been some force for good in your life. perhaps
i was some solace in those darker moments
but you won't remember them, now that the dawn has broken.

self-affirmation, so elusive. how can you run from doubting yourself?

orange

tangerine nail polish, so evocative of summer, the tang of freshly peeled orange and your fingers stained with juice.

one day, we all have to let go of some of those memories that we thought were permanently engraved on our minds. but i want to let myself go. to embrace what could be. to find fulfillment.

like a climber seeking new challenges, i am looking for a fresh precipice to risk myself on; maybe i will find truth at the bottom of a crevasse, rather than on a peak with only standing room for one.

disturbia

you obtrude yourself into my dreams, and yesterday i woke over and over throughout the short night. your face weaving in and out of my mind, the blankets twisted in a dark heap at my feet.

yesterday, i sat in a familiar crowd, in an ordered, sterile space of powder-blue. aircond on full blast. black opaque tights, a navy-and-cream print skirt of full layers, all polish on the outside.

and then i blinked, and a tear slid down my cheek. my lips were salt like the wind on that strange evening when we came out of the sea and sat in the sand together to tell our stories.

night sights

tonight, i would like to
climb st paul's hill, watch the moon rise from
those ancient walls
over the straits of malacca.
will you come with me?
we could sit
and talk about anything we liked
ships, perhaps, also sealing-wax.
but i would like it if
there were periods of silence, which
we felt no need to break
because being contentedly quiet together
is the acid test of kindred spirithood.
we might hear the sound of laughter float up
from the temples of modernism below
perhaps, a tang of sea-salt on the wind from the west
and soul would reach out to soul
atop the battlements of grey stone.

youth

there is nothing quite like being seventeen, and in love. such sentimentality, but it's touching, rather. such youth. i haven't the heart to tear those words born of old dreams apart.

http://volantis.deviantart.com/art/and-if-i-leave-379988

running

today, i am
that girl with ink-stained fingers, perversely
waving shoulder-length dark hair
emerald green satiny slim blouse
and eyes like dark grey pebbles.
i am that girl who walks alone in the night, through dark shadowed spaces
pushing wayward fringe out of her eyes
and travels with books in the plural.
later
running through the evening
watching the wedding dresses in the avenues
wondering if i'll ever get that far.

so let's sort out why i'm so mad. the important reasons:

a) i have to face the fact that i'm never going to be with you, no matter how compatible we are. you don't and won't love me.

b) there isn't anyone else who does.

yeah, (b) is really important.

c) i decided to give someone else a chance, very subtly, and he's not even turning up. waste of my time.

d) i need social interaction, okay, working on my own day after day is driving me off my head.

well that sums it up, basically. i'm really lonely and i'm too afraid (and too proud) to seek out companionship.

and plus the fact that there's not much available to me anyway. it makes me feel bitter.

sincerity

please help me Lord. i need all the strength i have. i don't know if i can cope, eventually, but i don't see what alternative there is. i need your direction, i need to have faith. i need to trust that you will reward me in the end. it's a difficult path that i have trod these past years. even happiness has come at a price, and i have nothing left to comfort me.

empty nights

this was me in 2003. suddenly i remember that night, that palm tree again.

lost
________________________________________ ________


The palm tree
is gone
and the night air
hangs still.
if not for sodium glare and neon flicker
the stars would shine brighter.
Yesterday
it was full moon
somewhere far away
people craned their necks to see earth catch moon
and for one moment
the stars ruled the skies.
Tonight
the moon chases us
down slim tar roads
so bright that its reflected glory
shimmers and refracts off the window-glass.
Tonight
there will be no palm-fronds to
give voice to the passing breezes
they lie graceless
severed and withering
beneath denuded trunk and golden moon.

crush

stilted would appear to be the theme of the day. how can you look forward to someone so much, and then find yourself searching vainly for subjects

i feel this strange coldness, a detachment from myself, from this life which is so lonely right now. i know i am selfish to want him when i cannot make him happy, but oh, God, I feel as if my future is darkening before me, a future when i will have to live each day knowing he belongs to someone else one who is oh so fortunate. i wish her well; my pain is not her doing, but it is just.so.hard to bear.

i wish i could leave; leave so finally and so suddenly that it would be a clean break. to not see you or hear from you. to be busy with new places, new people, to not have enough time to reflect on that aching hollow in my heart, until it has healed without my realising. but the nights, the nights; i would start awake from a dream in which a name echoed down the dark corridors of my thoughts, and as i clawed my way back out of the deepest reaches of my mind
i would know, run though i may, that there would be a face, a voice, a memory following me, waiting for me in the lonely spaces of life, until they are filled by another warm, comforting presence, which i have hoped for so hard, so long, that that hope is a habit with me now. hope, rather than the reality.

peace

peace, knowing that there are higher things. raise your mind to what is real, what is true, what will last forever, and trust Him to bring you through this. revelations, the leaves of the trees for the healing of souls.

this blessed time of year.

amen.

realization

i am a fool, i know. i would give it all up in a moment to be swept away in this with you, but the emotion of a stolen happiness is temporary. being in love is all ups and downs. like a crack high. the addicts continue because the need for those ups, the memory of them, obscures the despair of the downs. the body has no physical memory of pain. that's why women can have babies. or to live life on an even keel? life plods by day by day. no pain, but no

miraculous moments of joy
when you are fulfilled
and you know that this is where you are meant to be.

and that is my choice to make. oh to fling it all away and tread those treacherous cliffs. to fall off regardless of consequences. but, but, none of us are truly masters of ourselves.

bittersweet

life is moving on without me, and i am trying to snatch my future from the wind.

and this is because

because you were the first one who ever bought me anything, do you believe that

because you remind me of the smell of suntan lotion and everything is possible

because you didn’t have to try too hard to understand

because you are silly and sensitive and so very irritating sometimes

because you knew the names of stars and my childhood games

because you are what could have been but will never be

because we are terribly old, painfully young, frustratingly wise.