We dream and dream of being on display but when the time comes, we’re presented with a thousand flaming stages only to realize we lack an audience.
An elegance this level should be impossible to achieve.
Goddamn the feeling of unfulfillment when you wake up to a day already half-eaten, knowing the rest of it will crumble like stale Belgian cookies
Seconds are suspension bridges and minutes are semi slide-moments flashed across a dusty projector. Half-dipped-in-honey crescent moon. Guitar chords. Auburn-ambrosia eyes. Paper cranes. Multicoloured hand-painted ceramic measuring cups.
Gears turn and some things are forgotten baroque brass brilliant con brio. The telephone burns and the fences burn and the television burns and the bills are discarded in the fireplace and devoured by dancing flames, the rain intersects the window and polarizes into beads of snow-glass-ice, the letter sits on the coffee table and asserts cogency though it is obviously far too foreign for comprehension.
“I’m sorry”
Today is such a drab day. Feels like living in pre-color-TV times; the oranges turned grey and the reds turned grey and the blues turned grey and the golds turned grey
All I want to be is put-together
I.
Outside the panoramic window distant lights wink and sway in motions of their own. Indigo-stained and dull yellow and off-white as multicolored stars in a dusty universe. Minuscule constellation-cities, light and light and light and people and light.
II.
Humanity amazes me. The other day I was tired and bleary-eyed, ordering a coffee from the library cafe. I ask for my order, the middle-aged male barista asks for my name, I reply with the usual “Catherine with a C”, hand over the crumpled bills
He smiles. “Reminds me of my wife. Kate with a K. Met her over the counter of a coffee shop, too”
Duchenne smiles; truly genuine smiles.
III.
And if the weather could smile, it would look like today. Painter’s palette vibrant. Rustic and brisk in orange and red and yellow, dripping golden bronze, sepia, radiant frames of leaves against firey branches.
I can’t say that I understand, but at least I’m content. Por lo que sepa. It’ll be alright.
It’s so easy to lose someone in a sea of six hundred faces. Yesterday it was raining. I could catch snippets of a couple’s conversation, streetlights making odd circles of light on the wet pavement, soggy grass.
(“Were you an ugly child?” “I don’t know. I looked different in pictures”/”I didn’t use to have such long hair, my dad didn’t like it”/”But my hair is so long now.” “Why don’t you put it in a bun?” “It makes me look old.” “Well you have a boyfriend now, so that’s okay.”)
Queue. Offhand movement spills coins into unceremonious gutter, cellphone as light. (“Honey, no. What’s meant to be will be.”)
I never found out what was lost. But then again, I was the observer, damp boots and wet socks, I never did know what I wanted in the first place.
Things come in time, with contrast; it’s strange how we always try to capture things (moments, memories?) and the essence of the object is what fails to be retained.
I don’t know. The days are blurry with anticipation, swimming through the gaps of the not-quite and too-much and the in-between and the happy and the sad and the happy and the sad and the things I am too scared to say
Moving on, moving away, moving forward, moving together. Rewind. I guess it’s the trajectory of distance that’s important. To have direction. Dust on grass. Metal-tooled silverware. Iced tea. Guitar strings. Coat buttons. Rain on windows.
Disregard the predicate because there are different feelings for each fraction of space.
And of course morning is on it’s way but it really isn’t; it’s mid-afternoon. Days speed up and blend together and drip down the calendar (now liquid) without my consent. Don’t you miss the feeling you got. Changing tenses doesn’t change anything.
I mean, if you really are up to doing something you might as well conjugate capability and condense it into chronic curvature or maybe take it along with you as you leave with half your belongings packed in boxes and the other half of them trailing behind you like forlorn ducklings
Everything dips and swoons in small circular motions. The crescent half-moons on your nails have risen to signal nightfall, and there is a velvety, comfortable kind of darkness, one that masks the distance between destination and ability.
I sit on the edge of the bed and count the creases in the sheets while you string together sentence after sentence. Entire symphonies race through the hands on the clock in a coupling of time and motion. And there was no recuredo, no recuredo, sombras de ti, no recuerdo. And what was will be, and what will be was no more.
The branches are a mass of hands gently waving in wind that sings of clock hands and maps and juxtaposed irregularities. Unformatted foilage. Sunlit silhouettes. The silence does not need you.
[3 ways one builds a home].
My failure, mine. In the drenched asphalt a small lagoon spills in resignation, the exhaust pipe of a freight truck sighs as the sky becomes devoid of color.
We saw this coming, sings the bird, clinging sadly to the grey branch against the grey sky, torrents of rain making beads of water string themselves into a mournful pearl necklace.
[Three ways one shirks obligation], says the bird. Go softly, says the sidewalk. [An enumerated list of failures], says the girl.
