Burn

I am sorry to say that the stories you are requesting to read should be kept safe.  Stories about a face I have all but forgotten now.  The words, carefully written in undemanding times, a rash of clandestine sittings, about the ease of lyrical beauty and in the end, inaudibly translated into the language of conflict.  They are ghost stories, still and frightening.  Smoldering in an era that has long since passed.  They are a surreptitious reminder of joyful, aching delights.  Vivid accounts of a different time.  And, because you weren’t there, it will be impossible for you to understand.  But, since you asked, I will to my very best to relay the essence. 

It burned.  It was not a pleasure.  The end.  After we dug the trenches so deep.  Above all, I learned the heart is the most deceitful of all things.  Mine misled.  You know that delicate sweetness that consumes you when love is fresh and ripe, like plump rosy raspberries in rich cream spooned into a hungry mouth with a shiny silver spoon?  That subtle mellifluousness invaded my psyche and settled somewhere in the middle of my chest and opened me up to uncharted wonders.  With the grace of a fairground conjuror, smells and tastes, the sights and sounds heightened.  He entranced.  I could no longer decipher love from anarchy, exactness from indecision, and the aces from the spades.  I advanced.  Grew into my seraphic skin, the stones no longer rolled downhill.  My heart beat vermilion.

He was an illogical step to take.  Alone, I was introverted.  With him, voracious.  For meat, for miles, for everything I could consume, touch, occupy and own.  Without him, barren.  Plagued by the blur of armed guards denying me entrance to Eden.  It burned.  Scorched.  Charred.  Singed.  Bled explicit pigments of uncontrolled fire.  Vivid reddish orange hues. Result, ash.  My engagement with the world expired.  I wrote countless poems to exact the idea that fortune fades even when one has a tendency toward fever.

Trying to pluck a selective memory to share, a valuable account, an inviting snapshot to convey how living was enriched by the presence of lost love, you soon come to admit that all of the moments matter before the exodus.  His features are now altered in my mind’s eye but the first time he presented himself to me remains treasurable.

He was exquisite.  In the fog.  On a sidewalk in the city at dusk.  At first glance, he stripped me of my power.  I can’t tell you if it was the tilt of his head, his damp dark hair haphazardly veiling his deep eyes or the contour of his form leaning lazily against a brick building.  Fussing with his cellphone.  I paused to reconsider my entire purpose.  The next day we met in the park, he sat on the tentative bench next to me slouched forward eating a creamy hunk of cheese with a pocket knife while I sipped on a peppermint tea.  The insouciance, the peacefulness of the twinkling just being there together transferred into an extraordinary succession of tomorrows.  He tried to kiss me, I pulled away.  He said, “You may resist now but you will relent.”  I did.  Foolishly.  Living on borrowed time, its interior, bruised with disenchanted décor.  This I know to be true.  It was my impermanent home.

It burned.  Wounded.  Disfigured.  He shuffled off in dark suit to another.  And since, sidewalks offend.  Fog dismays.  Tea sours.  For a time, I forgot the weight of the world.  For a time.  Perhaps I am being impertinent.  Perhaps it is ambivalence.  Or it could just be you asked this of me and being indolent is far easier than being candid.  The scourge seared.  Nights went from provocative to stifling.  Hot hands replaced with cold pillows.  Mornings went from lazy to lethargic.  Lingering lips replaced with lonely limbs.  Subterfuge, it is an act of derision. 

It burns.  To be pallid.  To be insecure.  To be forsaken.  Denied.  I cannot comprehend how I will ever be able to bend for another.  It burns.  To be left.  To be doubted.  Discarded.  It burns.  To know that all that ever was is nothing more than blithe ignorance, to lose someone who deflated all of your pretentions, someone who fortified you, burns.  I burn.  Smoked out of happiness.  It burns. 

Now, when I speak I speak in monologues.  Small speeches, tiny tirades.  Now, when I cry it is in spurts and when I write stories I mar lined paper with mess.  Nonsensical pages about contrarian characters and sadness with a precarious new voice, writing about old things I no longer understand.  My stories should be kept safe.  Private.  Reserved.  My with-holding, an act of self-preservation.  A desperate attempt to extinguish the flames.  To cool. 

Because, I burn.  Still.

**

Friends of mine have started doing writing exercises together and so today because I desired to challenge myself to a few new words, I am piggy-backing on their exercise, using the word 'burn' to create from.  I wrote a messy and dull passage above but I enjoyed the writing session.  I had wine, I had music, paper and a new pen, some books, my dictionary close and my comfy clothes to chill in.  It felt good to write despite the fact that what resulted from the exercise was sludge.  

In other writing news, I am also thinking about going back to an unfinished piece I started awhile back and abandoned.  I am considering it as my next project.  I read through it and it really needs to be finished.  I found it hard to write when I first started it because one of the characters is just so careless, inconsiderate and in some ways absolutely cruel and self-involved.  I don't identify with those traits so spending time with her was caustic.  A little bit painful.  Before I tackle Alf Minor's story, I think I really want to finish that one.  It may take some time but that's my plan.  

With that, I am going to retire now to my blankets and pillows for a movie.  I bought a few today for cheap while out shopping, one of which was 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'.  That's a contender. My Philip Seymour Hoffman film festival is still on-going.  I'm waiting for the arrival of 'Love Liza'. So for now, while I wait patiently, I'll dig into some classic cinema.

Tomorrow I have mail to prepare and a long over-due letter/review to get out to Ru.  No numbers this weekend.  It's ll about words and stories and music.

However you spent your Saturday, I hope it made you happy.

In propinquity,

Nic