(not) a love story

It seems that I've gotten used to loving you without having you around. Those bitter days spent longing for you: for your chin resting on top of my head, for your fingers interlaced with mine, for your arm draped around my shoulder; those days are stacked in the darkest corner of my subconscious mind.

Once a while on a rainy day I leaf through the yearnings, the pangs of desire that arched my body and stole my soul - because that's what you do to me.

When a star dies it forms a black hole that sucks everything, even light into its abysmal void. And that's what your absence is like - a black hole, obliterating my innards and my soul, even the light of my life into an event horizon. It sucks and pulls and pulls and sucks until I lie as empty as a shell.

Even if I tried to forget you, even if I have you incarcerated in the dustiest room of my mind, you would've seeped between cracks under doors and through keyholes. And as though in revenge you would've haunted me night and day, with your face imprinted on the back of my lids, so that even in sleep I dreamt of you.

And I would've hated myself for being willing to continue loving you in misery, just for the smallest chance that you would love me too.

This Is How It Is

Note: Written for Jemmy to be given to Y.

I love you the way

Waves love the shore. 

There were times

when I was filled 

to the brim with tender love. I 

Loved you gently and I wanted

You

In my arms.

There were times 

when my love seemed like a 

hurricane: urgent and unrestrainable

I 

Thought of you

All night. 

But if you asked me

Why I loved you,

I would've had no idea

Other than I love you

And I do, I do. 

If You, But I

Often, in my dreams I
Do not love you.   

If you kissed me, 
my lips would not swell in heat.

If you touched me, 
my skin would not tingle in recognition.

But I do love you. 
And I yearn for the warmth of your body. And,

I want your milk-soaked skin next
To mine.

So I would rather not love you at all
Than to want you all day long.      

The Love We Buried

It was in the darkness

That we -

Groping and fumbling clumsily - 

Buried the love 

We had made.

If I forgot the warmth of your

Fingers splayed across my back,

I amended by tasting the phantom honey

Of your lips

In drift between sleep. 

But the rain is full of

Ghosts tonight. I dreamt that

You kissed me hard and rough.
What I had forgotten then
I remember now.

My soul was on my lips

And you licked it all away. 

Water

I wish I was born a mermaid
With hands white as ivory and lips
Running red.

I want scales on my body
Glittering and shimmering.
I want to store my sorrows in them
Bit by bit by bit until
It weighs me down
And flakes off.

I want to breathe water;
Fill my lungs with water.
I want to drown with water; I
Want to drown with
Out water.

I want to cry and drown in my tears.
I want to melt.
Into water.

The Death of Beksinski

There were days when he could not get out of bed; when he wallowed in his week-old pyjamas, slept in grease and sweat. But who was there to witness his disgrace? He was alone in the studio, surrounded by paintings, sculptures, all by his own hands. They were never judgemental in their gaze - perhaps they were too lost in their own grief, in their own torment that they did not notice. Perhaps they adored him the way children adores their parents.

He wanted to hold a congregation to prove that the old cliché, that every cloud has a silver lining was total bullshit. His son had committed suicide a year after his wife's death. Could people have misinterpreted the message of this cliché? Could it be that the silver lining was originally meant as a strike of lightning that does further damage rather than the equivalent of a rainbow? He had so many questions, so many God damned questions that even God himself could not have answered.

When he painted he created life. He painted skeletons and death and gore but it pulsated with life. He felt the pain in his deformed figures, throbbing in sync with his heart and he wanted to tell the man in his painting, I hear you, I know how you feel.

Often he lost himself in his painting, in the furious stroke of brush, as if he was uncovering rather than painting. He was an archaeologist, removing centuries of dust and sand to reveal pulchritude. He was an anatomist, detailing each human bone with care. He was a murderer, tearing skin off his shrieking victims, watching the blood gush vibrantly red from the wounds.

Life is ironic this way. He was suicidal, manically depressed for most of the time in the duration of six years after his son's death. In the year 2005, he was found dead in his apartment. He was not a victim of suicide, rather, he was stabbed to death with 17 stab wounds.

If he had committed suicide before the incident, would he have died a far more pleasant death? Would he have died peacefully in his sleep after swallowing some pills? Did the thought perhaps flash across his mind as the murderer stabbed him, continuously for seventeen times? Or was he afraid that his blood would splatter across his paintings and ruin them?

It's funny how we sometimes reach our desired destination but with an alternate, less preferred mean of getting there. If he had known that, would he have wished to live instead? Or would he have complied with what fate has in store for him, seeing the pain only as a collateral cost in order to achieve the eternal peace? Was he certain that he would've rejoined his family after his death? Did he have any doubt that he could've been stranded in a void, utterly alone, bodiless, cold, cold to the very core? Or was he just tired of the world, tired of being lonely?

I have so many God damned questions, so many that God himself could not have answered.

The Toska

As keenly as I felt the toska

I know that you have gone. 

The world has upturned 

In the mingling of our arms

And you are long gone.

I wake to see the embroidered

Veil over my eyes. And feel -

Feel the placatory warmth of my own body.

My skin itches, swells in layers and I

Want to peel it all away.

I want to lie naked and skinless

Skinless and naked;

And weep and strike my fists upon my breasts:

In all the crudities of blood and flesh - 

For isn't that what our love was?

Obsidian Lullaby

Voicelessness, for
The rain is mute.
It sifts from the pregnant sky;
Heaves and heaves.

The imminent blackness,
Naked and unabashed
Swallows me whole - into
More black, where I cannot breathe.

Here, the cold does not touch me;
Here, in this black abyss, I
Build my nest on lullabies sung
By the blessed darkness.

Lungs blossom into vacuum
And yet I sleep;
Sleep, sleep.

It's A Fucking Revelation

I've been waiting for this moment, for God knows how many months. This, this great deluge of foudroyant rain. I've been squirming in discomfort for months on end like a worm on heat - cacing kepanasan? Anyway, now, it's been pouring like crazy and I'm in heaven.

There's this tradition of mine - whenever it rains this heavily, I put on Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" and I drown in my personal elation. Seriously, it's addictive. Depending on how long it rains, I loop it again and again and again as I sit on the sofa in my room, lights dimmed so that I can barely see anything and I listen to the song. It's so good I get all goosebump-y. 

I dunno why though. The whole song is like a rumbling thunder, right from the very beginning. It starts with a deafening crash of chords on the piano and then it rolls into softer, more crystalline notes and then Celine Dion sings the first sentence: there were nights when the wind was so cold... And right then and there I melt into a puddle of... of... of whatever it is I melt into. By the time she completes the first stanza (?) - that my body froze in bed if I just listen to it right outside the window - I'm beyond melting; I'm evaporating. 

It is a fucking orgasm, to put it bluntly.  The song sort of blends in with the pattering of rain and oh God, it makes your heart constrict in pleasure and you just wanna scratch something just to release the ecstasy in you. Funny thing is, though, the song's just an ordinary, plain song when you listen to it when it's not raining.