"lines on my face, tears in my eyes, words in between my lips: a life unfolds"—-Secrets|Letters to Sylvia
I dream you still. And there I will be.
You don’t know my name. This is the past. And us is just a butterfly effect that didn’t happen. We are apart and at peace, just as before your eyes met mine, before our hands brushed and our words hushed. Before our secrets born into judging eyes. This is before everything.
And I am telling you this so you will search for me no more.
“I Want These Dreams Inside of Me”, When I My Own Daughter
these stories, they come to me in dreams the first time I fell asleep since they told me you’ve fallen into flatline
I dream you
sometimes in colours, green and oranges, purples and blues, and not bleak nor dark, we are not in the shadows
in these dreams, our children they’re born. they’re not sucked to death, they’re not stillborn nor bled away
they live and we give
names to their innocent loving faces
the eldest has my eyes, her brother has your smile
in these dreams we’re not bitter
we’re not numb from pain
in these dreams you are standing tall
little daughter dances on your devoted steadfast feet
her brother clung to your arms, his head rests on your secure and sturdy shoulder.
he’s falling into another dream.
in these dreams, I dance with you under the chuppah
and you recite a long vow, a song we used to hum
before we went to sleep
about lovers
lost
and again,
found.
On birthdays that are wiser,
drips on honeydew holy water new
icy breeze colourful rainbow rain, rain on me
don’t bite the bliss on an empty stomach
but ignore ignore, red flags or compliance
so wobbly a place you barely stand
filled with cracks you’re bound for heartbreaks
here we are and here i am
you go be you, i’ll stay and pretend
a friend that is not till the end
a ship that is slowly sinking
quietly drift drift like the wind softly
gone and forgotten, i’ll be
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.
101 Sonnets, Pablo Neruda
It was after dinner. You were talking to me across the table about something or other, a greyhound you had seen that day or a song you liked,
and I was looking past you over your bare shoulder, at the three oranges lying on the kitchen counter next to the small electric bean grinder. which was also orange, and the orange and the white cruets, for vinegar oil,
all of which converged into a random still life, so fastened together by the hasp of color, and so fixed behind the animated foreground of your talking and smiling, gesturing and pouring wine, and the camber of your shoulder
that I could feel it being painted within me, brushed on the wall of my skull, while the tone of your voice lifted and fell in its flight, and the three oranges remained fixed on the counter the way stars are said to be fixed in the universe.
Then all the moments of the past began to line up behind that moment and all the moment to come assembled in front of it in a long row, giving me reason to believe that this was the moment that rush out of sight into darkness behind the eyes.
Even after I have forgotten what year it is, my middle name, and the meaning of money, I will still carry in my pocket the small coin of that moment minted in the kingdom that we pace through every day.
This Much I Do Remember, Billy Collins
a ring on your plate when i cooked you
eggs, our years apart summarised into one morning
of jars and jars, bottled up feelings
of you looking into me, looking into something
of me saying things without a sound
our lives in suspended compartments
bubbles of cliches against time voices people
it is kind, it is patient and it is all you need but
it doesn’t conquer all, it’s never the answer
my love for you, insincere and vague.
skin to skin I could feel us
-the liquid beneath our feet,
trampling into endless vacuum,
bleak and emptied I barely
recognise your bald cry, a far sea
distant and I am no more
your mother–
you have arrived into
a morning song
you are
hope, hopping
you trample here
and there and in between
existence
for absence is what
you do best, to make
the heart grows fonder
resilience
isn’t your strength
you’d stay in bed for days
for tiny heartbreaks
persistence is
when you speak
of love you never
speak low
even in silence
your screams
aloud
loving to the end
longing to be
found
again
you’re my star, my big big shining star, I met you
one night, I met you under the limelight
your oversized shirt and my boots a number too small, they hurt my feet I’ve been limping dancing my years away
if only I knew how to tell you how I long
to hold your hand, but your fingers show me you want nothing but to slip them into mine and be vulnerable
so I held my guard down for that one. minute.
you didn’t turn the lights on and sat in the dark with me and I turned sluggish swimming an ocean of pride,
where’s my life-jacket?
still I let you
I let you love
you’re something big and I am
nothing more than forgotten dew in
a windy morning, but you,
you are sunlight
you are a new day
you have that smile, that
held back smile and a twinkle
in the eye
that says that I am
more than what I show
and I feel that I am more
than I want to be
hello hello, you said hello
I said goodbye, I love you, goodbye
-hello, goodbye, I love you
from Letters to Lovers Lost, re-published just now.
Far beneath mother’s womb rests a story of a knight who one day, in a faraway future, will speak of the truth.
The dragons in knowing this had prepared him prior to my birth for a future quest to find mother. Ali would settle me in a little basket near the river, for I was unwanted as Moses. And when the bell church rang three times, the knight would kiss me and present me to mother.
The day came and after a long challenging journey, the knight found mother. Mother and the knight finally met and shared a long kiss. Secrets were dripping out of their mouths, pearls born into the longing sea.
The knight, then, upon seeing an abundance of affection in mother’s eyes, bargained for her love. Mother stepped back, wailing.
The dragons, having the ability to hear her from far-off distance, alert and awake, realised the knight had betrayed them. They ran amok, flying in a speed of light and took me away from mother.
So much wind I feel in my heart and I cannot in the slightest remember flying back the time father was long asleep. But I vividly remember that he was. He was there but he wasn’t, it’s the only thing I am familiar with. But I remember flying across the sky with no end in sight.
In Ali’s stories, the dragons brought me back to father’s side. He was fast asleep so they put me on Ali’s lap instead.
They told Ali to never speak of mother, ever again.
everybody wants a piece of that fame
you bring to the table
so they put you on a silver plate at first
but then they feel it’s too fancy for
a hollywood roadkill like you so
they move you to
a worn out wooden cutting board
slice you up real nice into tiny bits of pieces
each to their own but
you’re there for everyone, suit yourself!
they happily
chew you up real slow
saving every flavor splattered on
the walls of their mouths their gums they lick
their teeth and lips everytime they got
that fancy exposure
they swallow you and finger the rest
of your blood
on their knives
and I sit there watching
thinking if I should get
my share
of that fame
but I am not
made for the public eye
I spill your tea on
everyone’s table
this fame of yours
hardly fits
my brain, should you
know what I want, it’s
your crimson blood
rushing through
my flesh
I want that lush
I want that rush
when i you and you,
me
“Mirrors”, Letters to Sylvia, 2019
These were the nights when gaps spotted in our time loop and father came back to us.
He’d travelled to stay for few days, playing house. Mother’s smiles reappeared and she’d dance under the moonlight.
At night I would see from a slit on the door slightly ajar, his eyes turning tender and kind, her complexion radiant.
I’d see them holding each other, her breasts upon his chest. He’d tell her places he’s afraid of, she’d tell him her dreams.
She’d say, “Wherever you are in life you’ll always have tonight.”
They’d look each other in the eyes and after a while she’d lead him but she’d be the only one who was dancing. She’d twirl to the ticking clock, she’d circle through time while he was drinking –one gulp after another, gazing intently at her –a much younger her, at their younger selves.
He’d hum her old letters he knew by heart with a voice barely heard.
Time would stop and in that second I’d know, wherever I am in life I’ll have them forever in my heart.
there was a time when
everything was everything and
we didn’t try to be anything
what do you carry around all day
besides a bucket of flowers
and heart full of promises of a new day?
here’s a tiny sting of guilt to share
there there, i’ve been there
nobody likes anybody in this town
forgive me i didn’t know better
i can never understand how
the universe works; or how you
expand like the milky way spreading
in space i can only stare from
a good distance.
“…there are clouds in these dreams and i am flying hard between ashes,
did you not get burned at stakes?
there are words in these dreams but I am not one saying them,
to swallow alone is pain. to breathe, a sin.
not one word out but here are letters for when you wake up,
she said, you will tell them how to say it out loud,
even with tears in their eyes. tell them.
and so I write.”
Get this book here.
it’s always messy down here in your basement
where memories go to a happy place
they say i’m in love with love
but i never knew how to flaunt it
in between unsaid words and
staggering poetry so let me write it simple:
i want you, life, serene and tender
i want you, love, without going so much on a bender
Right before our parting, mother sat me down in a meadow. She apologetically held my hands then placed a flower crown on my hair.
She said, “Remember this, love, for time is a loop. You will come back for me.”
Little did she know, time was in denial.
So suddenly as I realised this, she turned into a montage of old photographs between flashing lights.
I saw her,
the staggering girl between
dark webs,
I saw her vague fingers inside
his feathered glory,
such indifferent beak cloud,
white rush oh there there
brute brute blood!
here’s burning roof and tower
the centre cannot hold,
things fall apart…
____
Phrases in W. B. Yeats’ poems “Leda and the Swan” and “The Second Coming”, in this part of my book, are rearranged in an attempt of deconstruction. WB Yeats poems are an integral and essential part of my book, When I, My Own Daughter, available here.
Photo Credit: Alessio Albi
i’ve been carving memories on dry walls
four seasons of loneliness and you came bearing your own
stories of a little girl named Lara
her face her smile her every breath you inhale her
a picture perfect deep into your soul
she exists to you in ways that I could not
she has a smile that’s similar to mine, you said
her hair is golden like the sun,
this little ballerina and her pink tutu
and when she cries you cup her tears in your palms letting
them soak into the lines of your hands that once
a fortune teller told you, you wouldn’t make it to forty,
that you would be entangled in a story like none other
she said I would write them for you so daddy’s little girl
could forever lives in rhymes…
in bedtime stories and lullabies…
some days I got wildflowers
sprouting out
of my mouth
down my swollen chest
and there I saw the sea,
and sand in your eyes,
dripping down
of all the things
we’ve left behind.
a raft of hope floating at sea
but the water knows loneliness too well
and how you and i swim deep into changing currents
oh how we used to row row our boat roughly
to the unseen… and so i hurl my heart
i’d stay drowned so the water will feel me
and consume me, aren’t we all
liquids with cold cold hearts,
should we not come home already
dust to dust?
but the sun oh the sun comes
and how i long to bob out and float
and sway with the waves, they’ll find you
the wind whispers
what are we without the ocean?
who are we without this distance?
day one. dark coffee, abandoned building, a pile of classics: joyce, dante, zola. day two. endless driving, darker coffee, my heart palpitated in halts. tiny déjà vu. day three. turned off instagram(s). lay around on the grass. napping. dreaming. a land faraway. day four. wrote about the ocean. so blatantly. mundane and irresponsible. called you to tell you i did it. you paused too long. i hung up. day five. long walks to the orchard. long walks back. hours on treadmills. more coffee. irish. my heart exploded. day six. wrote sonnets. iambic pentameter. bad. really really bad. read them to you. you said don’t hang up just yet. day seven. beachy sunrise. pancakes overdone. overrated poetry books. blogged mean things about you. you read it and kissed me. the end.
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