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.