WORDS LIBRE

I’m trying to define you. Perhaps-- perhaps, it’s because you grow dim, like life seen through cellophane. So now, I must rescue you, your image, fast, whatever is left of it.

With words, tortured words.

You are a word.

Once, mysterious, a syllable I wasn’t acquainted with. So you could mean anything, so much, whatever comes without phrases-- an incomplete sunset for instance-- the kind that should have melted into red but refused to… the kind that turns a deep purple. Ah, the potential….

Then a word. Familiar. So “purple”, is no longer indeterminate, vague, a shade I’d have to build from scratch, around a million questions: “Does it ache?”, “Is it a secret?”, “Will it melt away?” It is purple. ‘Tis all. And this, my love, is just a kiss.

So now, you’re a word, the kind they call a cliché. One mouthed far too often. One that grows tired, like that kiss.

Sense it. Sense it again. Sense it now, with careless fingers. Sense it, till it smudges, then grows dull.

You’re a word-- dulled. You disappear.

And, now--- you’re not a word at all….

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

It’s probably a restaurant, a table sprawled between us, a neon lamp swinging overhead. You are seated, your face cupped in your palms, your lips mouthing a set of phrases I should be acquainted with. You ask me of my past, and I laugh, raise an eyebrow, and look away. You tell me I’m secretive, and I twist a straw, between my fingers, and smile. You complain I’m silent, so for the first time, this evening, I decide, I must speak.

I’m told, people speak. I’m told they speak of their lives, those brief episodes that do nothing for them, but dampen their rooms with melted snow, and colour them with deep purple bruises. I’m told, when they speak, there’s a defined start, a roll of thunder, thick sheets of rain, clothes clinging to cold bodies, something, anything, to suggest: two people meet.

If you must know, he and I met. Logic dictates, we did.

It was probably just another day, though, with an insignificant drizzle splashing through an open window onto a bedspread, a bedspread with the same pattern of lilac flowers, creased somewhere close to the pillow, a strand of hair on the pillow, black, too black, now slipping off the sheets, and spinning by an empty bottle of wine. There may have been a half-empty bottle of wine, or maybe it was just water, impotent, and lacklustre. Maybe I consumed it, hung-over, slipped on a pair of slippers, walked downstairs, bumped into him by some corridor, and followed his dulled shoes, like a drunken moth, to a coffee-shop. Or maybe-- maybe, he wasn’t there at all, and I walked, alone. Maybe, I got a call from a stranger when the aloneness weighed heavy, so I spoke, and said, I missed autumn with maple leaves strewn by the door. Maybe, our first conversation was on telephone, and revolved around maple leaves that neither of us had ever noticed, doors, and colours, burnt ochre, and blood. Or maybe-- maybe we didn’t speak at all, but lived with all-consuming silences, so soon, we had no reason to converse.

But no, I suppose we conversed. We must have, because I remember thinking that his voice was a blunt knife cutting through an apple, and, mine, a pebble slamming against a rock. Or maybe-- maybe, I didn’t think at all, but created some metaphors, aimlessly, right now, to prove a point, to prove that we spoke.

So once we spoke and found words deficient, I suppose we reached out… let our bodies converse… rest close, so close that we could feel the moistness of breath, taste the wet smoothness of skin, and smell a hint of cinnamon and black pepper-- but, was it cinnamon and black pepper--?  I’m not entirely sure. I can’t recall.

Perhaps, that’s our reason for drifting apart--  that-- that there was nothing left to recall. Maybe, it wasn’t even that, but something more tangible, like dialogue, words that morphed into creatures other than themselves, to bare a set of claws and scuttle away. Or maybe there were (and are) no images, no claws, only non-reasons, and more non-reasons-- like forgetting it’s possible to return.

We won’t return. Not again.

And soon, I promise, this too will end: this restaurant, this table, this table sprawled between us, neon lamps swinging overhead-- you, seated, your hands entwined in mine, to cover me tender, like a raincoat on an inconsolable day.

Cover me tender, dear stranger, a raincoat, on this inconsolable day-- hold me tight. Enclose me, as I erase another travesty today.

SO YOU KNOW:

Yes, I hear you. And I appreciate your concern. But this time, as I proceed waywardly, I want you to know: there won’t be a struggle: a breaking away and a breaking within. There will be no soft shatter now.

I shall let him in. I shall smile at him. I shall speak to him with dizzying quickness, so my words camouflage the emptiness of my interludes. I shall tell him everything: about the things I do: the window I half-opened, for instance, to let a grey cloud spill in, or the story I re-read today about a woman who won a man and lost him to a game. And I shall exult inwardly, yes exult, that not once does he translate staid verbs into nouns, or, acts into thoughts: that he never probes: stops and questions and probes- the colour of this cloud that slides against my wall, or halts to ask, if I, like some modern-day tragedy’s protagonist, have stooped low enough to play a game. We won’t play games. Instead, we’ll laugh, one with tenderness, the other with relief, as he advises me to close the window if it starts to pour or tells me that I read too many peculiar things.

So I’ll listen as reads me something: a poem perhaps that I’ve read before, or ten lines I fear for their intrinsic unease, and I shall hear him as he utters them perfectly: without the voice breaking as one phrase gets consumed by another, without the page shivering, for only an instant, as the hand trembles: perfectly, so for the first time, I can walk up to him, without feeling as though I’ve been swept by a delinquent whirlwind, and put my arms around him, and sense him, as his fingers slip through my shirt or brush against my throat. I shall feel glad, yes glad, that even as my skin yields to his caresses, he can’t touch me.

Let him love me: I long to be immune.

TODAY:

On walking down the road, you see people.

Some in black, their thin fur coats clinging to them, revealing, yet never enough. Some, in pink satin boots. Some, with their hair scrunched up, the way yours is at the moment, as you hold a cup of cold takeaway cappuccino. Then, there’s the woman who brushes by you, close enough to smell what you hold, close enough to touch your gloved fingers, and you wonder if she hates winter too, but no, she’s smiling- she must like it, like its dull hum of poetry, addictive like cold cappuccino. So as a man strolls past her, past the edge of her jacket, you know she won’t mind the whiff of his cigarette, because she’s happy, insanely happy, and that’s where you should be too- and get a cigarette, light it, no ask him, so as you stoop over and come threateningly close, he’ll smile, and smile- and you need a smile- but no-you’re tired, you don’t have cigarettes, don’t smoke and won’t try to. So you turn around, to hail a cab, and there’s a girl by a black car’s mirror, now tilting her head, now smacking her lips together, and wiping something off the edge, so you know it could be, no, some night, it was you- a girl, a bright shade of gloss in your fingers, applying it, like you would to a painting, a precious painting, because you’d meet him, he’d drop you home, and kiss the gloss off your lips, wet, too wet, and never call. And you’d mind, and cry for a bit, a day perhaps, maybe more, but then, at eighteen, you'd forget about it, like now you do so many things, the woman who brushed past you, for instance, or the man who smoked, or the cab you should have called, but never did, and the girl’s gone, and the car moves, and the mirror lurks, and picks a face, a new face, and you watch it, as her dress flaps and draws close for an instant. Now a girl in faux leather. Now you.