messages in bottles

[citoxiuq]

shopping after midnight

Fluorescent lighting flooded the grocery store aisles, bleaching the beige tiles until they shone grey, like stained smoker's teeth.  Neutral colours, John mused, made for better backgrounds.  He kept close to the super market's refrigerated edges, turned the thought over in his mind, and steered his shopping cart toward the canned foods.  The head of lettuce in the upper compartment tilted slightly to one side.

[citoxiuq]

winsomnia

i tread lightly on this twilit silence trampled by the falling rain in sleep she often wanders off the footsteps of her steady breath in stride with almost memories i meet her there or when we wake so let me rest a moment here within the dream before i dream

[citoxiuq]

cliche

The falling rain is a cliche.  So are the shadows on the cooling fettuccine, cast on the plates by the flickering light of two candles, melting at our empty dining room table.  I do not know where you are.  I'm still getting used to that.  There is no older story than the loss of love -- and yet the world ends every time at its telling.  The tears come.

I slump in the chair opposite yours.  I see your ghost as clearly as the bottle of wine in front of me.  I reach for both and clutch nothing but cold glass.  I start to sob with some volume, an erratic punctuation to the run-on sentence rain outside.

Do you know what it does to me, wondering if you're coming home, or if you're already there, someplace without me?

[citoxiuq]

here

exhale into our lavender bedroom

breathe the last of the darkness

pull the dawn toward your mouth

call my thoughts to lay with yours

there are no borders here

here, in our queen-sized country

[citoxiuq]

this time

When it happens this time -- it being the breaking of my heart -- I flash back to when I knocked over Grandma's urn.  I was drunk.  I was drunk a lot those days.  I drink as much now, though not as often, and I never get as drunk.

I was sixteen and it was four in the morning.  My head throbbed.  Through half-closed eyes, beneath two moths propositioning the porch light, I watched my hand rise in slow motion, as if in water.  My hand stabbed limply at the keyhole two, three, four times.  The wind rustled the leaves behind me.  I blinked and when I opened my eyes I was through the door, facing the familiar darkness of our foyer.

The stairs leading up to Mom's bedroom shuffled left and right.  The stairs down to the basement, where I slept, yawned up at me.  Leaning my left hand flat against the cool, smooth wall, I swayed in the shadows.  I blinked again.

When I opened my eyes, I was in the kitchen, slumped in one of the chairs at the round table.  The light above me was on.  So was the light in the hallway, directly in front of me.  Maybe she sat me there to keep me in view.  Down on her knees, with the dust pan in one hand and the broom in the other, Mom gathered the remains of her mother.

She said nothing about it.  Not later that day, not ever.

As my heart breaks this time -- though it breaks for another reason -- just as it was that night, I really have no idea how it happened.

[citoxiuq]

brighten

in love as we are -- and we are so in love -- we sit at the water's edge, the sunset above, sinking lower in the sky until our eyes, small in our skulls and huge with wonder, in silent praise and prayer, thank the day that sees us side by side, inseparable: you being the light and i being the water. i will uphold you. you will brighten us both.

[citoxiuq]

the ant on the wall

The ant on the wall is never just the ant on the wall.  It's one of the ants on the wall, a reminder that I'm not alone in this room that I'm paying too much for, that's too small for me to be sharing.  It's a point of gravity that shifts without warning, that drags my eyes across the stucco ceiling as I lay awake in bed, the victor in my unintentional staring contest with the street lamp.  As the ant changes directions in the pale light of dawn, it disappears.  The ant is replaced with many ants, these ones red and smaller.  The stagnant, sticky warmth of my bedroom dissolves into the angrier heat of the sun in a clear sky.  I am in a memory from my childhood in the Philippines, beneath the coconut palm in front of the gate to the old house.

(To have a gate in front of your house in the Philippines means something.  Over there, gates are used only in the corrals of animals, to keep livestock where it needs to be, as a matter of necessity.  To have a gate in front of your house is to say that you can afford two doors in a country where often a roof is too much to ask for.)

In this memory I am five years old, watching a puddle of red ants evaporate around the carcass of a bird.  Only I do not know the bird is dead, so I reach out to save it.  The pain comes faster than my screaming, which comes faster than my tears.  I don't know where he was, but my uncle runs to me, barefoot, wearing basketball shorts and a sleeveless white shirt.  He sandwiches my little hand between both of his larger ones and pulls hard.  He does this again and again until there are no longer any ants on me.  Only then does he shake the ones biting him off of his hands.  He is used to pain.  He knew life before the gate.

He takes me inside and gives me a chocolate bar.  He knows where my mother keeps them.  I share half with him to say thank you, but he does not eat it.  He saves it.  He wraps it in toilet paper and keeps it in his nightstand, where the ant on the wall will find it.

[citoxiuq]

peace - a haiku

take both thumbs instead hands can only do one thing when clenched into fists

[citoxiuq]

clarity

The hike took years off her face - the light in the clearing filled her wrinkles, so did the shadows of the trees.  She was beautiful to me regardless, with lines etched around her dark eyes, this pair of midnight lakes that reflected the stars.  But to see her as she seemed when we met, before our love, when our history was still merely a possibility... well, let's just say that it put stars in my eyes.  Shooting stars that fell to the ground, cast at her feet, where everything belonged.  Of course, she received them from me with a smile.  A smile that was also a wish she had just made come true.

[citoxiuq]

peace be with you

the orange silence of a street lamp through a half-open window

a bed in the corner and you beside me

your steady breathing the time it takes until you snore

amen

[citoxiuq]

namaste

To the people who feel obligated to the people who intentionally make them feel obligated: I hope soon you can excuse yourself without having to explain yourself

[citoxiuq]

please

i have had all the conversations --

gave my thoughts our voices

filled my mind with our faces

watched you watch me

as we lay face to face

both of us silent

one of us wounded

the other one sorry

the darkness indifferent

and just as quiet

i will always forgive you

but if you are not sorry

i have had that conversation too

so just be sorry

please just be sorry

[citoxiuq]

true story

I finally looked ahead instead of where my feet fell.  The puddles no longer mattered.  My sopping socks ceased to exist.  I checked my phone.  Five minutes.  A gust of wind tried to anchor my umbrella, so I closed it without breaking stride and began to jog.

I should have left earlier, I thought to myself, huffing now.  For the first time in a long time, I felt my lungs.

I don't know why, but it occurred to me that the torrent of pedestrians moved perpendicular to the rainfall.  Two currents colliding.  Or maybe kissing.  The rain clung to my glasses and blinded me, so I took them off, folded them and shoved them into my pocket.

It was too cold to sweat.

My left leg tensed and cramped up.  I winced, stopped in my tracks, looked left down the road, and then right.  I stepped off the sidewalk into the stream that flowed along the vacant bicycle lane, turned my back to the crawling city traffic, propped my left foot on the curb, leaned forward with all my weight, and willed the seizure to stop.

Across the road the black and white canopy fluttered above the diner, where...  Well, anyhow, it fluttered above the diner.

The cramp went the way of the wet socks.

One leg is enough.

I nearly fell forward.  I ran my hand over my hair and mused at the shampooless shower.  Then I fell forward.

Two people helped me up.  An older couple. I took a moment to memorize their faces as I thanked them.  I really was thankful.  I wiped my skinned palms on my soaked jeans.

Then I heard the bell from the streetcar before it came into view.

I made it to the corner, crouched down, rested one hand on my knee, gulped the air to keep from fainting, and smiled so wide that the umbrella I brought seemed unnecessary.

The streetcar dragged itself down the flooding street and stopped right in front of me.

She stepped off.

We stood under the umbrella I opened for us and kissed, and kissed.

"I have a change of socks for you," she managed to exhale between them.

[citoxiuq]

pinky promise

Please remember that courage does not have to mean conquering your fears.  Sometimes the bravest you can be is to not let your fears conquer you.  Sometimes survival is the pinnacle of what you can achieve.  It is enough.  You are enough.

I have seen through your eyes.  I have stared at a sky so full of stars, so full of darkness and of light, so complete in beauty that I forgot to cry.  I have been blind to my own beauty.  I have stared in longing at the happiness of those around me without realizing how profoundly I contribute to it.  I have not seen myself clearly.  Neither have you.

You are the culmination of your triumphs and your traumas, of what you believe and are unsure of.  You are so full of darkness and of light, so complete in beauty that, sometimes, all you can do is cry.  Having seen through your eyes, I have seen myself.  Look through mine and see the truth -- that we are the same.

So love yourself.  Hate the parts of yourself that you hate.  Try to understand why you hate them, if you can.  Try not to hate them one day.  If you have to, forget they're there.  Forgive yourself.  Forgive others.  Pay the price for who you are with both hands open.  See who reaches out.  You are enough, even today, when you need to be reminded.

[citoxiuq]

meditation on life (we are ok)

the sky exhales the light. a lung deflates. the space around expands -- you see? inhale. it comes. it goes. it stays for now, or not.

in spring the bloom outgrows the bud. beneath the pine that winter furnished with its coat: a flower petal skirt; a lily's leg.

we come. we go. we stay for now, or not. though we have roots, our movements anchor us. our stillness sets us free. we live both lives.

[citoxiuq]

the dream

I sat on a bench at the piano and she sat on a stool in front of the microphone.  We shared the spotlight like we did our blanket.  She took more of it than I did.  It was the same for the attention of the crowd, what crowd there was.  Mostly they were single men with drinks, keeping memories for company.

She turned back and looked at me, perhaps the only one, and nodded.  I counted loud enough that she could hear me -- one, two, three, four.  I played the opening sequence.  It unraveled to the corners of the bar, as though bedsheets pulled to the edges of a matress.  She took a breath.  I could not see her do it but, from our many rehearsals, I knew she had.  Then her voice.  Her voice and the dream.

You wake up beside them.  Not the person singing.  The person the music is for.  They are asleep in the half-light that gives way to morning.  They breathe calmly.  It is the breathing of someone finished dreaming.

She held the last note as my fingers curved to the final few keys of our song.

For a precious second the silence held.

A few of the people clapped.

The rest of us remained in the dream.

[citoxiuq]

on perspectives

The smell of fresh coffee woke me up.  I had slept through Rachel getting out of our bed.

I blinked in the half-light.  

I rolled off my side on to my back and starfished in the middle of the mattress, stretching my arms and legs toward each corner, unable to reach them, like a stunted Vitruvian Man.

Fainter than the smell of coffee was the scent of Rachel's hair.  It lingered over her pillow, a friendly ghost of sorts.  I shut my eyes, smiled and made a contented sound.  I saw us in my mind: a slightly slimmer version of myself curved to her body on our bed, facing the same direction while we murmured our closed-eyed good mornings.

The door to our single-bedroom apartment opened and then shut.  I stared at our ceiling.  My phone vibrated once.  I reached to where I kept it under my pillow.

One message from Rachel.

A picture of me still sleeping instead of the usual three words.