Gold

 You teach me silence. 

My words stumble and dissolve.

Only because 

It's safe

In your arms

They turn into liquid gold. 

Ghost Malls

 

Prompt:

It was a charity shop

Malls are scary they are just full of possibilities

And hopes

And lights.

Story: I imagine everytime how they will ghost the towns one day. Perhaps the possibilities seeped through the polished glas door fronts and meandered into second use kinda things. Like the charity shop. Then turned into a practice room for DJane workshops. Later perhaps, on the roof there will be a skate park and then, finally, the shadows will eat through the hopes and the lights and leave the bare bones, the skeletons of this errant civilization behind. Maybe a dancer will slide down the broken escalators and write with blood on the broken marble floors. Perhaps a poet will shudder slightly and write about the woes of something, long ago, called capitalism. How everything seemed so lost, how people ran from one shop to the other and couldn’t find a way out. Exits in different languages, signage gone wrong. How charities tried to wash consumer’s souls but no matter how long they scrubbed, less and less money came off their pale and ashy skins and tattered fragile minds. The way hopes were sold in plastic bottles. The way lighting misled people to buy more and breathe less deeply. The way how green plants meandered through the cracks and found hold and brought oxygen back to the grey. The way people fled the cities and wept in the remaining forests.

in the wait

the voice whispered to step back, create space, but I declined, couldn't hold it, wrote anyway. i write and you respond in drops, but you say you felt it was coming and that maybe that's why you had a good energy today. we seek cause and effect in each other's embrace. but there is nothing like that. 

the voice whispers again. okay I say but I write once more, I want to wear your voice like a coat, here I am begging at your door but the door has closed, I can feel it energetically: I need to give you space.

but how much space should I give? is it to follow my fears or my wisdom?

so I do what I thought I wouldn't do, with you. i delete the message.

still

after you left, there was a deep exhaustion, not the bad kind, settling in. i felt like sinking to the ground, held by water but distinctly heavier than it. 

like a leaf slowly swirling through thick autumn air. leisurely, but tinted with light blue melancholy. 

the next day's journey is rough. grumples. a feeling of struggle, with what, remains unknown. the fall comes after, early morning search run after an alarming message, finally finding you and your demons convening in a bar.

the awakening, slowly, hidden in a cave, soft mumbles and secret sharings. you have finally arrived, it took so long you whisper. i feel shy but also expansive. whatever the future brings, at least we are treading a path of courageous truths. 

 

Raw

i'm feeling raw from the inside, the flesh hurts where it touches my bones, my heart is pressing against my rib cage and sends rays of pain to my neck.

my bones imploded, they are voids now, crushed into fine stardust. there is silence where they used to be, throbbing in the aftermath of the implosion.

maybe only angles can hear so low a sound.

i lay my blue coat on the floor to go for a swim in its vastness. 

heavy weighs the grief around my shoulders, clinging onto my neck, begging for sleep, for forgiveness, for a new era of relief. 

Big Blue

big blue went on a bikeride yesterday. we played with each other. later, exhausted, big blue laid itself out like a carpet in my room while I scrolled on Instagram on my bed. when it slept I slipped out to run some errands. the wind was nice. blowing through my hair, caressing my skin, no big blue, shh, it's sleeping, at home. when i entered the apartment it was sitting in the bathroom, by the mirror, looking at me accusingly. 

this morning blue was probably running out on its own but as soon as the part of the day approached where i had to do things in the outer world, it suddenly jumped in my brain and settled there, partially weighing down limbs as well, and a bit of the chest. one step out of the apartment, and blue is unfolding like a coat around me. holding firmly onto the upper part of my brain as it snuggles around me like the weighted blanket i use because it's supposed to make you feel hugged.

i sigh. nothing i can do about it now. me and blue unlock the bike and enter the streets: everything seems fine, people on their bikes in short shorts and the clouds are playing with the sun. 

at the cafe i crawl into the farthers corner of the room and convene with big blue.

big blue, i ask, what is it that you need? why do you feel better in my brain? how is that safer? i really enjoyed how we went on a bikeride yesterday. i don't see why it has to be this way. a part of me is afraid. afraid that it will remain this way. that big blue will turn dark and become a shape that inhabits me. which will make it even harder to meet anyone because it takes up so much space and those shapes are fearful of touch and being known by others. it seems impossible to let other people into those secrets. 

maybe big blue just needs me to cry a little. so it can come out of my head again. 

big blue doesn't agree with just a few tears though. it props itself up and says slowly, as if i was hard of hearing: i want you to acknowledge the full tragedy that I am! and it tries to stretch itself into really large shapes to demonstrate its weightiness and importance. i chuckle. i acknowledge you, i say softly. let's write a song. let's make a storybook. big blue is intrigued, immediately, bending over my sketch book, glancing over at the guitar. calling the clouds to summon its best friend, A.'s big blue. let's go to Alaska and be utterly dramatic, it says proudly and slowly rips all papers in its vicinity into tiny pieces.

let's go.

finally i dare to look at big blue. we hug quietly. 

sunset

 now, 

the clouds are like someone painted them with a loose paintbrush. 

a tiny stretch of smoke left by an airplane, behind that darker cloud that is shaped like a secret, glows pink orange speaking of a set sun.

sunset. loving someone who is dying inside - i wrote, as a response to the seven word story challenge. 

but this is gone now. done. 

those, who have loved and lost watch the dance of swifts filled with awe. 

the blue of the evening sky is still too light, only here and there a hint of violet. the dark will come. paintings waiting to be completed.

but when is done really done? you ask. i sigh. i have lost sight of the endings. they curl around my ankles like a sagging mess of underwear, transforming into hapless creatures, small snakes, snapping, wiggling, urging each other in confusion. 

unfurled.

what needs to be done

 the clouds balloon in a milky white overexposed sky. it is summer again. swallows and swifts elegantly cut through the heat ether while the trees hold their breath until a soft breeze invites them to dance again.

there is a young man with pale skin and a bitter disappointed face sinking into his bony body, limping through the coffee shop visitors asking for money. his right foot is wrapped in dirt white gauze bandages, a wound that had no time to heal.

there is good music, still, in this world, and in these headphones. Brothers of Santa Claus sing a song called 'figure it out' and the beat and voice reminds me of those days in Vila Madalena when life was closing in so narrowly the only way I could survive was by squeezing through a tiny crack that catapulted me into the stratosphere, further and further out into space where everything seemed bearable in its utter mysteriousness. much had to be left behind. much was lost. much milky white obscurity surrounded me.

M. finds himself in a predicament, his partner decided to come out with him and the baby as he is trying to bring me the keys to my apartment. i know he hoped to bring those keys and find love but his life choices and responsibilities are getting into his way, the price he pays for secrecy. the same way my choices and undercurrents brought me to this moment, without access to my home, witnessing mute intuitions playing themselves out. i knew, somehow, that this was much bigger, much more complicated than just a hand over. 

his worlds are clashing, just across from here, at the other side of the canal while I re-open my blog because there is no one I can think of that I feel like sharing all of this with. the judgement and concerns of my friends i am not afraid to deal with - but not right now. also my journal seems tired of my handwriting. as such this is the place now that i return to, in need of my own intransparencies and secrecies until the seedlings reveal their tap roots and sprouts and hopeful lives into the open. life holds its breath, until the winds get a hold of it and dance, dance, dance.

two girls laughing in the sun over their cups of coffee and a boy writing, in solitude, with his beer and cigarettes and references to night on earth and coffee and cigarettes by jim jarmusch. when M approaches I love his silhouette and his gait and his gaze as he arrives and his warmth mingles with the summer and my silly heart.

it is clear that life is closing a chapter. my thoughts and feelings are barely cutting through the mud, it needs more water. i swallow hard. the feelings balloon and want to discharge themselves in a big thunderstorm. there is no need for begging, the music reminds me. 

i look at the suitcase and the backpack idling by my table. the transience of being on the road humming and strangely comforting. 

Danube

The gray covers the canal and empty branches of the trees and the people huddled into winter clothes and speaks to this fact: the right ear is too small for this bluetooth headphone bud. It keeps falling out.

In a late night deep-dive into old Emails from her mother she finds a song that moved her strangely, more than a decade ago: Dumitriu Stanescu's interpretation of 'On the Banks of the Danube'. Tears smear all over her face, the toilet role tucked behind the lamp lest it looks too messy on the desk she originally wanted to dedicate her studies to. The pain of this grief is seemingly unsurmountable. She tries to hide behind pizza, behind Netflix, behind Instagram, succumbs a little then reaches out to others in a rare attempt to build a structure around her as she crumbles into the nameless pit of dark sorrow. Love, riddled with pain and sweetness, she doesn't know how to name things anymore as the contoures dissolve.

Mom said: your words are strong and poetic, I see a future there.

Mom said: come with me to Slowakia.

Mom said: If you weren't my daughter I would still find a way to cross your path.

The next day she has to go send a package to an unknown person who will take this laptop she received from another unknown person to a person she really only knows on Instagram in Tanzania. Ironic, considering the stack of unsent letters from her past.

It goes like this: She manages to choose the right package and the materials to cushion the laptop. She watched a Youtube video so she knows what to look out for: the corners must be protected. The tape the post office provides to seal packages is broken. She finds a way to still deal with it. She sends (!) the package and realizes ten minutes after, that she forgot to add the charger. Apple chargers cost an arm and a leg so she has to return to the office, ask for the package that hopefully hasn't left the premises yet, open it with a knife and add the charger. She does that and thinks of her headphone bud that keeps falling out from her right ear. Some things just don't work out right, it's like a curse. A different world that she doesn't belong to, whose language she doesn't fully speak - but the irony doesn't escape her so she chuckles instead, but a bit desperately. 

Mom is doing better, she is a bit high with all the meds. When asking her if she will give her blessings on her wish to have a baby she insists to get a dog instead.

Grief

 Today I cried about a milk coffee pretending to be a cappuchino. The liquid was caramel colored and tasted of pasteurized milk. My sister had insisted to buy it for me because she loves me and she saw how distressed I was about not having had my cappuchino yet before we went on a walk in the forest. I broke down and lamented the fact that I let people talk me into things when I really wanted to get this coffee somewhere else but then decided I didn't want it at all after all because Mom started coughing terribly and covid fears are real. 

I instantly felt sorry for guilt tripping her for something she had done so that I could be happy. Instead, I cried.

I cried because I'm hormonal - that's PMS - but also because I am at the verge of crying since a while: After years of mainly appreciating the way my Mother has been walking her journey into the big now (that is, dementia), I hit a wall of inconceivable grief this summer.  

My cousin says it's the grief of having to let go of your mother even though she is still alive. I thought I had already navigated those waters, relating to her more as a friend, but apparently that was an illusion.

So I cry and I cry and I cry and I cry an ocean of salty tears. It's simmering beneath the surface. It is magnified by PMS and bouts of depression. This is the third big loss in my adult life and you'd think you'd get better at it but each time it's so different and yet so familiar. 

The luxury of having my mother next to me, humming and singing into my hair as she is rocking me back and forth when she finds me a sobbing mess doesn't escape me. I'm deeply grateful for that. 

Yesterday, she asked with great empathy when I had calmed down 'where does it come from? Is it from a deep sense of wondernment or is it sorrow?'

I loved that she considered awe a possible source for these tears. And there is awe. But it is raw and fragile.

Full

Poetic was his love.

Perhaps that the key, the secret to the riddle. Allowing the full to blossom. In its wretched and blissful moments, full, honest, unbridled.

When I think of you I realize how restrained I have lived, how it was a decade of new moon and half. How I lived on the other side, waiting to be released. For a dawn to break a spell I have crafted myself. For shadows I have cast to turn with the tides. For sand to turn into dust.

I don't know what I could do differently. How to live full. How to walk away from lovers who guard themselves as much as I do. Hoping for a crack to appear, for a heart to unbreak and stop being so dramatically inward.

I want to live full. I just don't know how to walk out of the shadows of his love and live life poetically.

midwife

It's seven years now.

He writes: I don't think he could have had a better midwife.

And warmth fills me and I smile and I respond yes, thank you, it means so much.

I don't cry. I'm not overwhelmed. And that is a sign how far I have come. I know that it is true and he didn't have to say this to make me feel whole or at peace. But the fact that he did still does change a lot. It takes away some of the anxiety I have felt to go to his hometown. To be where all the people live who loved him so closely and who wondered who that person was he was with when he passed.

Because while I personally feel at peace there is still perspective and dynamics and questions and the last rest of doubts and fears. It's not a static kind of mental state you achieve: 'be at peace'. It's like a dance, a movement, to be on this side now, alive, to later also pass. 

It is true, Dad, it is true, what you said when I was broken in a million pieces, howling through the paper thin walls of the tiny quiet temple guest house that tried to shelter me after experiencing what surely should have been impossible: The future determines the past.

no place for sad

there is no one or place really to off-load this blue bulk of sad and not right.

i understand how kids can make a difference, somehow, if i had a girl that would snuggle herself into my arms so i can have a purpose and read a god-damn children book to her, or even better, make a story up.

sad engulfs my mind and it's definitely pms but i'm scared it might also be the depression that is coming back and the acupuncturist's prediction that i'm on my way into a depression is true.

it's funny because sometimes we think something big has to change for us to feel alive again but perhaps it's the small things, like going dancing finally. but here i am procrastinating my thesis so i can't go dancing. it's so lame.

oh no there are positive thoughts now crawling into my mind. for example: what are the things i love and they are RIGHT here. i can just take it if i want it.