Twilight
You return to loss the way one returns to a bed one has slept in, long ago, as a child.
Amazed that your body still fits within its dimensions. Tempted to pretend you never left.
* * *
Your own end
All night you sit in the dark, the gun ticking at your temple.
Every goodbye is a compromise. If you could explain how you were feeling you would not need to do this. And yet your suffering is as ordinary as newsprint, and you want to pretend you are not in love with death, that you are just using her.
Not judgment after death, but a death that does not judge.
* * *
A violin, a cello and a piano
New cellos are no good. The perfect cello must be aged for years in a cask of pure silence, until all its high-strung bitterness had turned to mellow grief.
* * *
Proactive
Every time someone gets close to her she holds back, keeps her distance. Waiting for them to turn against her, waiting for it to go wrong.
It always does.
Aseem Kaul, 2x3x7
You return to loss the way one returns to a bed one has slept in, long ago, as a child.
Amazed that your body still fits within its dimensions. Tempted to pretend you never left.
* * *
Your own end
All night you sit in the dark, the gun ticking at your temple.
Every goodbye is a compromise. If you could explain how you were feeling you would not need to do this. And yet your suffering is as ordinary as newsprint, and you want to pretend you are not in love with death, that you are just using her.
Not judgment after death, but a death that does not judge.
* * *
A violin, a cello and a piano
New cellos are no good. The perfect cello must be aged for years in a cask of pure silence, until all its high-strung bitterness had turned to mellow grief.
* * *
Proactive
Every time someone gets close to her she holds back, keeps her distance. Waiting for them to turn against her, waiting for it to go wrong.
It always does.
Aseem Kaul, 2x3x7
3 comments:
Sometimes you read something so personal, you have nothing more to do than simply write it down - In your diary, with the name of the person who said it- so that you never confuse it with your own words or feelings about things.
“What’s it like to be a human
the bird asked
I myself don’t know
it’s being held prisoner by your skin
while reaching infinity
being a captive of your scrap of time
while touching eternity
being hopelessly uncertain
and helplessly hopeful
being a needle of frost
and a handful of heat
breathing in the air
and choking wordlessly
it’s being on fire
with a nest made of ashes
eating bread
while filling up on hunger
it’s dying without love
it’s loving through death
That’s funny said the bird
and flew effortlessly up into the air”
Funny by Anna Kamieńska, in Astonishments (translated by G. Drabik and D. Curzon)
Indeed, dear Rukhiya. And thank you so much, whoever posted that poem. I am in tears.
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