CLXXXIX

9/1: 

That tight chest feeling

Rising anxiety

From your stomach to your ribcage

Almost breaching the throat

Though wordless

My anatomy still succumbs to it on occasion

Without warning or explanation 

The general feeling of things not being ok

With me

I won’t escape this for a while

It seems

[Jean Campbell for Vogue Russia]

CLXV

Song for someone - 

I've circled the sun 3.45479 times with your ring on my finger, my darling. With your soul publicly wed to mine. And I regret not one of those 1260 days - not for any of their harmony, hurt, joy or sorrow. I understand you far more than I imagined and far less than I hoped. You see me both deeply and soulfully, and yet not at all, I feel. And yet here we are, still making our fourth go around this fateful orbit, and suddenly you say you're unsure. 

Immensity of fear and un-quietable loathing are knocking on my door. I can hear their jaunts from every room in the house, and I wonder how much longer I can prevent them from coming in.

You tell me, my once confident, courageous-love. How long ago did you open your door to all the demons we swore to keep at bay, or atleast to pronounce to the household before welcoming in to supper. 

Promise and trust. Where did those friends go? It seems they slipped out in the night when I thought you were sleeping soundly with me, but you were not. How can I call them home? Tell me. If it's a rousing song of my deep affection, I'll sing it. If it's a rigorous defence held against all of your afflictions, I'll take up my shield now for you, my love. Just name them to me. If it's unabashed honesty in recalling all of our failures, I've strength to face them. I've strength for us, my darling. Do you? Have you enough to let me carry you? Have you enough to say you'd like me to?

I don't know how the next 200 days will play themselves out for us, or even whether we will make it to the completion of orbit number four. A harrowing but honest thought, I tell you. All I know is that my heart skips a beat when it hears you say my name out loud, in a crowded or empty room my every fibre yearns for a sight or smell or taste of you, if ever there were a star I'd want to wish upon it would be the one that twinkles in each of your deep and soulful irises, and if tomorrow you tell me you love me no longer I know it would be as if every bone in my body were simultaneously broken.

Stay with me, baby. Stay with me. Stay with me, my suddenly lost love. Stay with me. Stay. 

CIII

And now I breakdown in the Woolworths carpark. Because every word you say is gemstone, and moments worth their weight in bronze just breeze me by.

The moments are so few these days that I cry before I hear the end tone, and only just does my whisper mask the catch, and only just do you miss the sob, and only just have I trained my throat to quell the sobs. I look around for strangers who might look on, but even then I couldn't stop the rolling and even then I couldn't stop the shudders. And thats a lot for me.

I'm usually quite good at keeping it together.

I don't know about you but its all been a bit much lately. I don't know about you. That's the truth and it hurts. I don't know about you do you want me to? I don't know about you but the moments are so few these days and one day I'll break before the end tone. And then what will we do?

I'm usually quite good at keeping it together, but we're not right now are we? So neither am I. Every word you say is gemstone. Is that what makes me feel so heavy?


[Images Lena C. Emery]

LXXIV

Life doesn’t work the way people lead you to believe. It’s not always an upward slope. Sometimes there are downfalls. Sometimes there are pitfalls. Sometimes there are plummets back to the bottom where you started. Sometimes you lose your foothold. Sometimes you forget the direction you were heading in. Sometimes you lose the war. That’s how it is. 

But only sometimes. 

And sometimes, you win. 

[Images by Min Nomchong via Summersite]

LXIV

When words don’t make sense, speak anyway, because silence is deafening.


[Image: RUSSH Magazine]

LXIII

Today is not sunny. I can tell because I'm sitting by the window, and I've been watching for a few hours now. The birds are in the red tree and not on my window sill. Because the sun isn’t here to differentiate the good from the bad spots. The warm from the shade. Its all shade. That’s why the birds are in the red tree.

Yesterday we found a desk and I've set it up by the window and now all I've done is sit here and watch. Its funny how things make an impact on you. A psychological one. They trigger things – like desks trigger words for me. I've written more words this morning than I have all week. Maybe even all month. And aprons – aprons trigger new recipes and gastronomic adventures. If someone were to buy me a new apron today, I’d probably spend all of tomorrow cooking something wonderful, and then finding someone or someone’s to eat it up and tell me about its goodness.

What if you were to buy me a loom, or a cat, or a matchbox or a bottle of Windex? All of these things mean something. They mean something to me, anyway.

Do you ever get tired of all the meaning that goes swirling around in your mind, triggered every millisecond of a millisecond but what you see, do, hear, smell, say, sense, think. Its hard to discern which meanings to trust in – our minds play so many tricks on us, don’t they? I have the debilitating habit of trusting all of them. And that’s a lot of nonsense. Nonsense for breakfast. That’s what I'm having.

So here’s a little piece of nonsense for you. If you’ve made it here thus far. I know its likely you gave up many m’s and n’s and p’s ago. Because its just nonsense. But I wont give up on you.

What if all my life this is what I was made for? Sitting and watching and waiting and thinking and writing and thinking and thinking some more. And avoiding and procrastinating and thinking and watching and sitting and sitting and watching some more. What if this is what I was made for? What if I’m good at this? What if I'm not…

I even doubt the nothings. That’s a laugh.