alsoawriter

She started showing up in the stories, over and over, parts of her reconstructed in various characters. Her smile, her face, the quick temper she burst into. Her name too, a few letters missing here, a few added on there.

He’d never believed in reincarnation.  

When he finds the picture, he wishes he was the kind of guy that was smart, gifted, real clever with his hands and brains. The kind of guy that would think of nothing easier to do than disassemble her phone and fix the sound that came out of only one side, could put together radios and hi-fi’s, the kind of guy that Apple would have snapped up and Google stolen. He could have assembled a carburettor as easily as snapping his fingers, like yesterday man, could have done it real easy too, without a sweat breaking across his brow, maybe even in between the commercial breaks in his favourite programmes.

He would have made a time-machine for her, gone back far enough to a point where her eyes looked less like today, and more like the picture he holds in his hands. Would have wrapped her up, all safe, in cotton candy, and blankets, and even in his goddamned arms, just so he could stop her from being this person who comes home and sits her sadness on the bed, like she’s folding in on herself, like a sad, cheap tent denting in the face of rain. 

After my sister died, I found a birthday card she’d written in her version of sweetly awkward, the words as haltingly jagged and painful as if she’d given birth to stones. I wanted to hug her for it, even the way she said “and you also know that I am not very good at writing cards” as if those words themselves weren’t nestled amongst the evidence, right there black on white.

After I found it, I sat there for a while, rubbing my finger against the envelope, against the way she’d written a nickname I only called her once or twice, wishing I could hold physically onto it, even though she never liked being held herself. I wished I could have. 

After a while, I put it away. But I thought about it all day, holding closed that part of me that always gaped open when I thought of her. 

I should have been upset
when I heard you had a new girlfriend

when I heard you had a new girlfriend

a new girlfriend
a new

I should have been upset when I heard
that you had a new girlfriend

but instead

I feel relieved
strangely relieved

I feel strangely relieved

because

shouldn’t I be crying?
shouldn’t I be upset?
shouldn’t I be lamenting
eating ice-cream
and declaring war on all men-dash-kind?

or at the very least
call in sick and have a fat day

But then I never did follow the status quo

never did cry too much
and so I don’t have one of those fat days
I never did have too much of anyway

I feel strangely relieved
that you have a new
that you have a new

a new

strangely I feel
so upset that I can’t even say
the words

and so I’m strangely relieved
that you have a new friend who is a girl
or a new girl who happens to be a friend

Don’t misunderstand me

I’m not strangely upset about this friend girl hybrid

I’m upset about the memories
the new memories

that you will create with this
new friend who is a girl

the new memories
of new scenes
of limbs entangled
of the casual way, her toothbrush might lean against
your paste

of new shared intimacies

I’m upset about our memories
the old memories
of our old habit of matching our skins together
of dusky savannah days

I’m upset about those memories
that are still so vivid
it’s too hard to even look at you

I should have been upset
about this new girl who happens to be a friend

but instead
I’m more upset about 
mental photographs that will never come again

and while I was having a 
don’t call in sick non fat day

I realised I’m strangely relieved because
you’re not my problem any more

I’m strangely relieved because
you’re not my problem any more

not my problem any more
yet it’s strangely upsetting because
I always did like solving problems

alone, I wonder
           if the taste of your lips
will still taste as good
next lifetime

or better?

will those soft cushions of cerise swept
auburn flesh
mature
will the sweetness have an added
tang
will they still make me lick and re-lick my own
to recapture

faded deja vu’s?

alone, I wonder
           if your slow blinks
will still fascinate me

still haunt me

if you gaze
will still feel
like sun rays glinting
through molten chocolate
so their glow
makes me lose words

next lifetime
will you understand 
that is why my tongue is struck dumb
lies crippled in my mouth
and silence settles in my throat

next lifetime, I wonder
                    will the simple mechanism
of your russet bound sinews
still lighten my load

make me feel like resting
against the trunk
of your tree
rest in the shade of your leaves
even if we are sipping hot drinks
in bustling cafes
and my thoughts are only reflected
in the soft escape of air
pushed from my lips

next lifetime
will you understand
that it is not me
but our combined scents
rising out of pores pressed close
that smells so good

when silent, I wonder
                if the dusky gravelled timbre of your voice

will still soothe me

when we speak 
in the midnight hush
of my worries

next lifetime
will you understand
that it is the stillness
behind your words
that reaches me
understand that
next lifetime
I will remember each time
I buried fingers in long, tame waves
growing

even as I touch your locks anew

next lifetime
I say, to myself,
I will use as yet unborn letters
to create new ways to express myself

now,
my words are choked
by as yet unrealised dreams
not allowed to be born

now
all our carefully 
laid plans for tomorrows
are delayed to next lifetimes

i guess I’ll see you next lifetime
no hard feelings, baby
see you next lifetime
I’m gonna be there*

next lifetime
will we understand
that we should have planned

for this one?

(*quote from Erykah Badu)

“Well frankly when that ocean so muphucking good
Make her swab the muphucking wood
Make her walk the muphucking plank
Make her rob a muphucking bank
With no mask on and a rusty revolver”

ain’t that a bitch?

the drops roll over her lips
she catches them
with the back of her hand, pressing
pressing hard enough
to bleed away the colour

i want to kiss them back to life

a smile on my face
even glowing from my eyes
within, I’m screaming

i am always living five hours behind with one eye on my phone or watch or computer clock it tells me subtly my schedule and how far behind i am running (it is rare i am ever on time, let alone early) and i am partways across a deep dark ocean and partways on the opposite shore they are two cities iconic so similar yet split asunder and i am ripped to shreds with wants and hopes and prayers and you who lives inside me to the point when i know almost the second you wake because i am already there with my hand on my phone expecting your call and although this existence halfway here and somehow there is slowly driving me crazy tired neurotic and impatient i still wake sometimes the last memory before dreams your voice whispering goodnight although it is bright bright afternoon for you and i think

how could i feel so close to you
thousands of miles away?