The End.

When I wake up in the middle of the night

Screaming at shadows, dripping with sweat,

I don’t reach out for the lights.
I reach for you.
When I’m counting down the hours until break,
Cursing my job and everything under the sun,
Thinking of lunch doesn’t make me smile,
You do.
And when we lie down, laughing, in the wet grass

So we can close our eyes and wish upon a star,

I’m still smiling at you,
Knowing that my wish came true.
 
You must think I’m pathetic.
God knows I do.
If my teenage self could see me now,
Groveling in dust
Like the flea-infested dog you quickly walk past
At the butcher’s, he’d want to kill himself too.

But this is what you do to me.
You with your blazing eyes and caustic tongue,

The sly, half-smile that gets me every time,
You with your beach-tanned boys and pinstriped men,

The hushed phone calls and playful winks -

Why won’t you smile anymore?
Is it the scars on my shoulder, honey?
Where you put out your cigarettes, one sizzling dot at a time,
Painted purple over days?
  
Love found me in a nightmare once -

Whimpering, shaking, weeping blood,

Love held me in her quicksand arms

And she looked just a little like you.

Not Love.

You think you love me

When all you really love

Is how my smile reminds you
Of the mother you never had.
Her gap-toothed smile

Watching from the picture frames

In your father’s house,
Its dusty hallway empty

Like his heart.

It’s easy to fall in love

With someone who feels like home –

Their breath on your skin

Like the storm against your window.
The light in their eyes

Like fireflies in the dark.
Their voice is music

Because it's not yours.
The blisters on their hands

Are cotton against your palm.

Tell me how you love me
On days you don't love yourself?

Growing Up.

Is that your plan
Doodled in the margins of a notebook
In fifth period, English class?
Lofty goals and sun-kissed dreams
Bursting through
The fading ink of your sloppy scrawl.
You feel invincible,
Your life a jigsaw puzzle,
Waiting to be made whole
On a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I know what you’re thinking.
I can read it in the curve
Of your mouth
As you sneak a glance
While passing a mirror.
I bet it’s nice to feel so brave,
To watch the world
Quiver at your touch.
Fate becomes your little pet,
Nuzzling into the palm of your hand.

But pets die, and mirrors break
Old notebooks get left behind
Sunday noons are ruined by work,
And jigsaw pieces disappear.

 

Giving In.

When you move away,

When you move away from home for the first time,

It feels a little like learning to swim.

The adrenaline kicks in, you find yourself

On top of the world for a while

But mostly it’s just drowning.

Sometimes the days go by in a blur

Of friendly faces and one drink too many.

Always a drink too many.

It creeps in on you when you least expect it -

That longing for home you thought you’d banished

Three margaritas ago.

And when you’re hunched up before your computer,

Drowning in music the screams that will not come,

You finally give up struggling.

The waters swallow you whole

And there’s not a damn thing you can do.

Writer's Block.

I hate how the light bounces off

This sparse white sheet

Which thirsts for words

That may never come.

How funny would it be

If it turned around

And slapped me in the face

For wasting its time with false promises?

Time. There’s that dreaded word again

Creeping up my skin

Like an insidious snake

Preparing to strike

Me into senselessness.

Everything affronts my nerves tonight –

The whir of the fan,

The shadows it casts

On its vigil around my battered ceiling;

The grunts down the hallway

As a sweaty stranger preys

On daddy’s little princess;

The unruly strands of spray-dyed hair

That sweep across my brow,

Stealing my vision.

Where is the madness promised to us?
That little spark to reanimate

The rotting remains of intellect?

I will trade my soul

For a few sorry rhymes,

Spill blood and sweat

As sacrifice

To conjure words

From emptiness.

They tell me to settle down,

Find a nice young boy

And ruin his life;

Hang the apron-noose

Around my neck

And slip

Into a life

Of picket-fenced perfection.

They’re joking, of course

But on nights like this

Of empty bottles and double vision

I almost believe them.

If my mother should see me now

She’d tilt her head and sing

Into this abyss of shattered dreams

That old refrain –

“I told you so.”

The words will haunt me

Till I die,

Echoing into

The afterlife.

Yet something in me still persists,

For ego is a feral beast

And only if my pen would write,

Some lofty tale I’d bring to life –

A legend whispered long ago

Of dragon-slaying or of woe,

A pretty damsel in distress

Whose charming knight is put to test,

A wily temptress in disguise

Brewing potions for a price.

And just when I have stalled my fears,

The magic kingdom disappears,

My words dry up,

My prose runs thin

And old foe silence

Creeps back in.

If you should see me by myself

On nights like these,

Please walk away.

This cross is mine to bear alone;

I risked too much, I should’ve known

That fickle fancy’s not my friend.

But still I hold this idle pen,

Praying for a miracle,

To scribble through

Life’s sorry test,

Not knowing that

My muse is dead.

The Itch of Familiarity.

Society would have us believe that humans are genetically programmed to seek companionship. Our happiness, they warn, will amount to nothing if not shared with that treasured circle of kindred spirits. All that self-serving pseudo-philosophy about meaningful relationships and emotional co-dependency sounds fine and dandy, but the real question that almost always goes unanswered is this.

How close is too close?

Would you share relationship woes with a person, for instance? Or a bank account? Or how about recounting that one time you got hammered at an office party and made out with the boss’ fiancé? Once the little nuggets of personal information start spilling out, just where do you draw the line? Sure, you may think nothing of an innocuous confession about that wild child phase in college, but before you know it, you’re sobbing on the living room couch, spilling your guts (and a glass of sherry) over the murder fantasies you’ve secretly entertained about your half-sister Eunice. If that hypothesis makes you cringe, imagine the plight of those on the receiving end of it.

Humans as a race are notorious for overestimating their capacity to handle the truth about others, never mind about themselves. It’s easy to romanticise the idea of getting to know someone inside out while riding on the wave of indulgence that a new acquaintanceship brings with itself, but sooner or later, the novelty wears off, the quirks fail to intrigue until all you’re left with is the musty aftertaste of a dull familiarity.

Frieda Lawrence deemed this the “terrible gift of nearness”. I, in my admittedly limited perspective, call it the Too Much Information Syndrome. The narcissists of our social network generation are so driven by the urgency to share every last titbit of their delicious selves that the very concept of gradual discovery is all but extinct.  In a virtual space, at least, one still has the option of unsubscribing from candid confessions, but when forced into the close quarters of an actual relationship, it becomes twice as hard to find new means of escape.

But why, you may ask with a faint frown, shouldn’t you share with the people who care? By all means, share away! Once you’ve realised that the person in question is a deeply flawed human being and not the demigod you’d fancied them to be, you can finally focus on working together to conjure your own bubble of mutual bliss. Textbook guide to a happy ending, am I right?

It’s not that easy.

Once you’ve seen a person in the unforgiving light of raw honesty, there is no escaping that knowledge. Try as you might to gloss things over with fancy cocktail parties and vegan brunches or whatever is the current social distraction, at the back of your mind all you will be able to think of is how Henry snores like an elephant in labour or that Amanda eats like an invalid with missing teeth. In a world where we struggle to embrace our own idiosyncrasies, what chance do the oddities of others really stand? The more we learn about another person, the greater is the challenge to accept them, the more does our patience wear thin. And God forbid you should somehow find the divine restraint to reconcile yourself to the million little things that make up a person, for once you’ve made peace with that, what is left to fight and conquer?

There’s a reason why some of the greatest stories in the world focus on the journey of discovery itself. Nobody talks about what happens after the great resolution, for nothing ever does! When the first flush of pride at our superhuman capacity for tolerance begins to subside, old devil tedium rears his ugly head. After you’ve wandered through someone’s mindscape and pecked at their memories and aligned yourself with every crevice of their myriad beliefs, their thoughts cease to surprise and their soul shrivels into a shadow of your own self. And what good is a shadow when you already have one in perfect working condition?

Stop broadcasting every arbitrary sequence of words that just happens to pop into your head. Your Facebook followers don’t need to know your inner monologue at the exact moment you swallowed a dry pill. There is no compulsion to tweet your opinion on the chicken sandwich you had for breakfast. And for God’s sake, don’t even think of Instagramming an aerial shot of the sandals you bought on sale.

Bring back the mystery, people.

A Weekend.

An introspection, devoid of fancy trimmings.

A lot can happen over a weekend. Your dog may die. You may find out that you were adopted. That your partner cheated on you. That you’re expecting a child, or have one you never knew about. The dreams that you’ve carefully nurtured can come crashing down around your ears.

A lot can happen over a weekend. A life painstakingly woven over the years, strand by precious strand, can be ripped to shreds in a matter of hours.

It’s terrifying how little control we have over life. We convince ourselves of our own authority by clinging to petty nothings – our choice of wall paint, the model of our car, the style of our hair. We create a false cocoon of little options to reinforce this delusion of control. Anything to avoid a brush with reality, to sweep the shards of truth under our neatly-made beds.

Truth is, there are no guarantees in life. Everything is destructible, nothing can escape annihilation.

This is what I discovered this weekend. That my life is precariously balanced on a fragile plane of aspirations and the gentlest of nudge from the universe can tip me over the edge into a bottomless precipice of darkness.

To presume that we have a say in the nature of our existence is human vanity. Life is nothing but uncertain and any speculation to the contrary is an exercise in futility. Should we then crawl into fetal position and await our inevitable end? Or fight the odds in a valiant if misdirected assertion of independence? If a weekend can obliterate life as we know it, what chance do we have against the tyranny of decades?

The answer is painfully clichéd.

Hope.

If you don’t know where your next meal will come from, hope for the kindness of a stranger. If someone doesn’t return your love, hope to meet a better man. If your chances of landing that coveted promotion appear slim, hope to beat the odds. If you’ve been all but rejected by your dream university, hope for a miracle, goddamn it.

If you can keep that hope alive, no misfortune in the world will hold you down.

A lot can happen over a weekend. That friend you’ve been mad at for years may finally apologize. You may win the lottery. Your crush may ask you out. You may perfect your great grandmother’s eggnog recipe. Life swings both ways – if the worst may happen, so can the best.

Hope for that perfect weekend.

Happily Divorced.

Inspired by an American sitcom of the same name. 

 

I should’ve known our union was against nature’s scheme

The day you baked me brownies lathered in whipped cream

Why shouldn’t men love to cook? The feminist in me cried

And turned her head the other way, the day your hair you dyed

A ghastly shade called ‘diva red’, the ugliest I’ve seen

“But it’s so pretty! -I mean bold”, in soprano you squeaked

Which reminded me of Margarine, my ageing spinster aunt

Who shot her beau with the gun with which he used to hunt

I should’ve known when my friends exchanged looks wide-eyed

The day I introduced you all, the day you wore that tie

With Marlon Brando’s brooding face printed all over it

The way you kept exclaiming, “Damn, that guy was ripped!”

You couldn’t pass a mirror without pausing to look

A quarter of an hour to style your hair it took

When people raised their eyebrows, “He’s metrosexual!” I said

“Oh well”, they cried, unconvinced, “As long as he’s good in bed.”

I should’ve known something was off the day we hit the sack

I’d often catch you pouting at the glass ceiling we had

But you were a good partner, I’ll give you that my dear

Even though you wrinkle your nose at the smell of beer

I remember when I found on you a smudge of red lipstick

You swore it was just a bruise from a flying hockey stick

But nothing beats my discovery of your secret underwear

With little hearts drawn on them – not just one, but a pair!

And this is why, my darling, I’m throwing the towel in

But that shouldn’t undermine how happy with you I’ve been

For while you aren’t exactly what they call an ideal husband

You’ve stuck by me through thick and thin and been a stellar friend

I’ll wait for you to find your way out of that famous closet

And prepare to be your wingman, so we can double date!

Imagine what fun we’ll have, all the parties we can host

To tell our friends and family that we’re happily divorced.