matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a metaphor

The metaphor is the union of an object so enamoured with another, one cannot help but imagine it saying, like the passionate shepherd to his love, “Come live with me, and be my love. From this point on, your strengths will be my strengths, and my strengths will be yours.”

The cynic would at this point probably add: “And what about your weaknesses? Never you mind. It’ll only take a few months before one of your contemporaries publishes his own thoughts on these, ironically coupling his poem to yours forever.”

cold turkey

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.
But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
- Charles Baudelaire Be Drunk

I don’t drink. There’s too much forgetting offered in clear or amber or maroon liquid for me to trust myself around alcohol. But sometimes I wish I did. Especially on nights like tonight, when my thoughts turn into vicious hornets that don’t stop stinging, and I somehow feel you crawling all over my skin. Is this what it’s like to stop an addiction cold turkey, this incessant discomfort, this antsy feeling that won’t let me be because somehow I have a feeling that something is wrong? This desire to do something profoundly stupid, where does it come from? I don’t know. The only thing that’s certain right now is that I’m craving you and somewhere inside me, a voice of sanity is telling me that I’m not who I used to be because of you, and that’s not okay. Sometimes though, I just need the forgetting.

Don’t get me wrong- I’m in a far better space than I’ve been in the past few months. But every now and then, I feel an urge to write you out of me once more. And so I find myself in front of my computer again, typing you out, every single tap of the keys being an exorcism of sorts, a Morse code disappearing into the past. But it’s just one of those nights when it seems that everyone’s trying a bit of forgetting – for tonight, even Dave Matthews sings with Baudelaire.

Neon shines through smoky eyes tonight
It’s 2 am – I’m drunk again, it’s heavy on my mind

I could never love again so much as I love you
Where you end, where I begin, is like a river going through
Take my eyes,take my heart ’cause I need them no more
If never again they fall upon the one I so adore

Excuse me please, one more drink
Could you make it strong ’cause I don’t need to think
She broke my heart my Grace is gone
One more drink and I’ll move on

One drink to remember, then another to forget
How could I ever dream to find sweet love like you again
One drink to remember, and another to forget

Excuse me please, one more drink
Could you make it strong ’cause I don’t need to think
She broke my heart, my Grace is gone
One more drink and I’ll move on
One more drink and I’ll be gone

- Dave Matthews’ Band Grace is gone

is this real, or am i dreaming?

It’s crazy, I’m thinking, just knowing that the world is round,
I’m here, I’m dancing on the ground,
Am I right side up or upside down?

- Dave Matthews Band’s Crush

last child

We come home from school, my brothers and I,
to find
another cardboard box full of fruit, dumped
on the kitchen floor.

a family double our size wouldn’t be able to finish
it all, before the contents blackened into
inedible mushy shadows on the khaki brown

(the fridge can never take anymore, stuffed as it is)

Over the next few days,
we give away what we can:

Slowly, secretively, sneaked out in
our school bags, or stuffed in
blazer pockets
- bananas first (always first)
(they so easily break out into soggy despair),
then oranges (before they gag on their own thirst), perhaps then
the hardy apples, like foot soldiers, often standing till the end

Redistributing the evidence
of my mother’s addiction to
amassing objects
needlessly, endlessly,
Provocatively

This habit we picked up from our dad
who, every few months,
Explodes at finding
yet another pyramid of tinned saltwater salmon
in the cupboard,
Or a fresh stash of meat
in the extra deepfreeze we had to buy
to accommodate my mother’s
wants

He redistributes too,

But there is nothing quiet or secretive
in his way – tins are pulled off the shelves
and flung into
the open maws of garbage bags
and meat flung out onto the floor
like frozen cymbals

(my mother later repacks this all out again
when he has
‘calmed down’

She says he does it ’cause
He likes things ordered,
neat,
clean,
only what is necessary
belongs)

Sometimes I wonder if she does it to
irk him,
egg him on,
if it isn’t a game she plays to see
how far she can push him, how much
he loves her

It’s not only food, you know, but
oddbits, like buttons, glass
bottles, old magazines, pieces of
electronics, possibles, maybes, things
We might use later

our house always
the warzone of my mother’s collecting
and my father’s cleaning

And I, last child of three,
late by 4 years,
unplanned,
unwanted girl,
where do I fit in,
I sometimes wonder

Am I her way of winning
another battle, another
feather in her cap
- something they didn’t need, but something
he can’t throw away

For in all her excess that smothers me: her hair
her nose, her shape,
it is his eyes
that look out my face

crippling him

a visit to the fresh food market

Prawn and avocado on bruschetta with tangy mayonnaise sauce. Giant carrot muffins with crushed pecan nut icing. Iced berry smoothies. Barbecued mushroom skewers. Gingerbread men with chocolate eyes and jellytot noses. Chicken schwarmas stuffed with lettuce, cucumber and tomato. Vegetable spring rolls with sweet chili sauce.

It was like walking through the pages of a Jamie Oliver cookbook. But even better, for here it was not only my eyes that could feast, but also my stomach. My friend and I went ooohing and aahing and scrounging from all the free tasters we could. But as stall after stall displayed its wares, I felt increasingly confused: how would I eventually choose something to eat when there was so much to choose from? Savoury or sweet? Local or international? A big meal or nibbles? Moreover, once the big choices were made, there were smaller differences to decide between: This stall offered olive paste with chili, while that stall offered olive paste with cashew nuts. Did I prefer chicken or beef in my schwarma? An all-berry smoothie, or a strawberry one? Eventually overwhelmed by the mass of smells, tastes and sights, I finally suggested that we leave.

“But you haven’t bought anything to eat”, my friend said. There must have been a slight panic in my eyes at this, for she paused thoughtfully. Then, as we passed a farm stall stocked with fresh fruit and produce, “I know. What about an apple?”

Life lesson #415: A good friend is someone who, in the face of amazingly sophisticated and wonderful choices at the food market, suggests you buy an apple.

Life lesson #416: You are blessed with a good friend, if you buy the apple because she’s guessed right that all you need is something simple.

the question with waiting is always: how long

“Why do you never wait for me?”
“Why don’t you ever call?”
“Why do you always just leave?”

Only as the months went past, did I realize that these complaints weren’t isolated events, but a refrain. More than that, I started to notice how right the voices were: I’d simply get up from the middle of a conversation and walk away, I’d be gone when someone asked me to wait for them, I left my dates alone at parties in rooms full of strangers.

I was just so tired of waiting. Waiting for him had crushed any sort of tolerance I had for the act of waiting. I’d wait for the sun to rise on his side of the world, and for the moon to bide its time on mine. I’d sit in front of the computer, waiting for the little light next to his name to light up, and move to the top of my IM contacts. I’d wait for my phone to ring or for a beep to indicate a new message. Yes it did, more often than not, it did. But there were occasions where I’d ended up waiting hours, one, two three, for him. And in those eternities, which stretched on like the twilight shadow, my newly discovered heart would die a thousand deaths.

It was waiting that finally broke me. No matter how long I waited, no matter how long we chatted, it was just to return to another state of waiting. While you were there and I was here, waiting would be an unavoidable part of my life. But I was still to learn that your words weren’t promises, just words. Till now, again and again, I re-visit our ending on innocents, on those that shouldn’t have been affected at all.

What guts me most, though, is that even now, when I find myself impatiently unable to hold on for others, I find myself still waiting for you.

Even in Paris where we never were
I wait for you
knowing you will not come.
Ruth Stone – Turn Your Eyes Away

did Death not hear my pleas(e)

 If only I could reach
the homestead of Death’s mother
Oh, my daughter
I would make a long grass torch
I would destroy everything utterly utterly

- traditional Acholi funeral song

You do not see it, but

the sea, in parting,
swells with salty tears
when the tide
unclasps his hold
from the beach

the tree, in sorrow,
wastes away
sending summer leaves to
flutter to
earth’s touch

even
the sun, in longing,
races around the globe
searching
while the moon desperately
flings out stars to lead him home

for Nature enacts love better
than I did,

I, who walked away

- i don’t understand, he said

- why it helps if we understand more?, she asked
- yes. what does it matter, if the ending’s still the same?
- let me tell you another story.

“Once upon a time, there lived a little girl. She had two older brothers whom she loved very much. She was younger than them, much younger, but they adored her and looked after her. As she grew up, it would be the elder brother in particular that she’d turn to for help. He was funny, kind, gentle and friendly to everyone he met, but he was also strong and firm. The little girl was grateful for this, for she fell in love one day with someone who treated her like dirt. Fortunately, her brother was there to help her and protect her, and she managed to come out of the whole incident, relatively unscathed, and with a far bigger appreciation for a brother who stayed up with her when she was upset, who cooked her food when she didn’t feel like eating, who’d driven her where she’d needed to go in her little white Golf.

Then, one evening, they were driving home from a party, and she got home first. Instead of going to sleep straight away, she decided to put the kettle on so that they could have some tea and chat about the evening. But he didn’t come. At first, she wasn’t too worried- she’d left before he’d finished saying goodbyes. But as she finished her tea, she started to worry. He’d told her to take his car home, as her little Golf had been having engine trouble recently. Perhaps he’d run out of petrol, or the engine had blown for good. Finally, when the ticking of the clock sounded as loud to her as the ticking of a bomb timer, she grabbed her handbag, her keys, and was busy putting her jacket back on when her cellphone rang.”

- and?

“Twenty minutes later, she found herself in front of the police station. The night wind had picked up, and her thin jacket was quite warm, but she felt as though she’d been frozen to the ground. What was she doing here? Why wasn’t she at home? Where was her brother? The thoughts ran in her head in circles like hamsters stuck in hamster wheels. Then, she took a big breath, took a few steps forward, and pushed through the entrance door. She couldn’t remember what she said, or who she spoke to, but she found herself following a blue uniform down the corridor. Her high heels went click clack click clack against the floor, and she found herself wishing she hadn’t automatically grabbed her party shoes. Five doors down, they paused, and the blue uniform turned around, said gently, ‘You can go in’, then left her. She heard a loud knock. Was that her making all that noise? Yes, there her fist went again on the hard door. And a voice inside called ‘Come in.’”

- and then she walked inside and …

“She’d later find out that her brother had died a hour earlier as a result of a car accident. Her conscientious brother, who always obeyed all the road rules had fallen victim to a couple that had gone drag-racing after a drunken night out. The wife had lost control around a sharp bend, and had smashed into a white Golf that had just stopped at the red light. The driver inside would die on impact. Her white Golf. Her brother.

But that was later. She didn’t know this as she saw her brother’s wallet on the desk. And her CD carrier. And a book she’d borrowed from him a few weeks ago kept on the front seat of her car. A couple of loose coins were clumped in a heap. A joker’s hat that had been borrowed for the party was lying limp next to a mangled piece of black plastic, was that his cellphone? Then she saw the officer behind the desk, and as her heart started to throb very loudly in her head, she opened her mouth to say ‘No, stop, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know, please’, he very coolly met her eyes and said ‘If he’d been wearing his seatbelt, he’d still be alive.’”

- …. ow. that’s harsh. … i can’t believe he said that….. that’s the bloody last thing you say to someone who’s just lost someone!..

My Monday: A Story in 300 words

Today I woke up to find that the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the wind was just a quiet little echo, and I thought to myself: “How lovely, what a perfect day for the beach”, but because I had so much work to do and too much laziness to organize something, I suppressed my desire for a day on the beach, until 11:00, that is, when I got a sms that my friends were going to the beach so I jumped into my car and vroom vroom, eek eek twenty minutes later I was there on the beach on my towel in my bikini yay yay yay and I ate a cupcake and an apple and drank my water and watched my friends in the water and it was oh so very nice and then I drove home and typed up this story which isn’t close to 300 words, but sometimes stories don’t have to be what you said they were going to be.