[in remembrance of a winter]
After Mary Oliver
*
tonight [read: yesterday] I blame[d] you for everything
tomorrow [read: tonight] I shall thank you for this gift of darkness
*
memories are shaped by desire.
*
*
Will you teach me how to love? I do not want to end it. Will you be so kind as to show me the way? I do not want to get lost. Where are you? Where do I look for you? Which one of these is your path? Where did your feet tread on the lonely road? I want to go there. I want to reach you somehow and walk with you somewhere.
[as i look for a way to touch you, i already find myself with you. you walk alongside me on this lonely road. you teach me little things and beautiful things. your absence is my present companion is my teacher. your presence would mean everything in your absence. does that make it more meaningful?]
*
does it matter if i love you when you do not love me?
[how you like to ask for permission to feel something]
what logic would you teach me to believe that it matters?
[how you like to measure your emotions. did it help in the end?]
does logic even work when feelings stop listening?
[you wanted to bury everything]
what drives me is my own cautious self and not these questions
[you thought you were losing control of your(self/poem)]
what if this love is too strong for me and too impure to clean?
[you had lost all respect for yourself]
what if my love is only attraction, lust, pride, innocence?
[you were never sure about (love/language)]
how will you ask me to clean them for you when you do not register?
[you know now that all you wanted was for him to want you]
what if i clean them for my self-respect?
[saving face]
what if i cry so much that all my walls break?
[you learned that from your mother]
what if all that is left of me makes me accept things that cannot be fought for?
[you thought you could get it by winning]
things which cannot be fought for: [an impossible hope]
so i do not say goodbye [you are still not over] as long as
i feel something
[you had no idea about the years ahead and you did not care]
*
i am jealous of the flowers that bloom when all the bushes in my heart have withered away. brown. dry. dead.
*
i am waiting for you to tell me whether i matter [later you would ask, how much?]
*
take me to the bosom of your utmost kindness [unconditional]. if you cannot love me, sympathize with me. if you cannot sympathize, kill me as you kill me every day. kill me with your hate, but do not ignore me. do not confuse me [with silence].
this, too, was love
*
i loved you when you loved him and i still love you when you love no one and i will love you when you love someone else [this is not true] but you can never love me and i cannot accept it so i bear it away day by day
*
do you think it matters that you cannot be what i want you to be to god or nature or universe or even to yourself? [all you wanted was to control him] my heart is not broken. it is a little cracked. i have applied some glue and it will take some time to dry. a few coatings will do. the mark will be visible but i will not feel it. right now it's mending so it hurts. tomorrow it will be mended and will not hurt. stitched and glued or in whatever way one mends cracks and tears.
*
I tried to catch an impossible hope and we know how that ends.
*
I chased a dream that was too good to be true.
[let it go even though it keeps you alive]
*
you made me carry the burden of this love
when it did not work out
you [read: I] blamed me for everything
*
i feel worthless not even to win your efforts to come after me. you leave everything to time but time will not heal it now. the scar is kept alive and the crack is oozing. i will not have you back. you are not mine and you never were but i still want you to try so that i can feel a little worthy. i feel very lonely. a little effort maybe? no. okay.
*
my soul flutters with hearts and feathers/ it flutters at the slightest touch of any inconvenience/ what is happiness but a state of oblivion or a mechanism of survival that some develop and some don't/ and those that are left are left sad and brooding/ their thoughts in perpetual melancholy/ think not of the happiness of the future but of the discomfort of today/ i have lost all strings of hope and faith/ i have lost the blueprint of what can keep me alive/ dead now/ forever dead
*
perhaps you were here to make me realize you were not worth it
*
what does bitterness want but itself?
*
there is a strength to confession that even the most accurate of guesses cannot reach. the strength of validation and acknowledgment. [did you ever cry at the realization that he could never confess?]
*
laughter, too, is a form of mourning
*
perhaps you were there only to be the muse of my poetic dream
*
have you faced denial and have you faced the vacuum and the silence of the object you love or have loved? constantly pushing and leaning closer until you can lean in no more? the capacity of another's vast emptiness that can suck out of you a void of its own. it can cause an upheaval. a catastrophe. you do not get stabilized. you calm down and you lean back. you move away. something changes along with it. something in you changes with all the stretching. can you blame the void for making you lean too much and for pushing you too much? an object is an object and you are the agent of desire. you hold that force. you hold that misjudged emotion of love, longing, obsession, captivation, infatuation, want, need, lust. the object is what it is. you are the one who feels. the object can either open up to it or can answer you with absolute silence.
[my friend tells me absolute silence is denial]
*
[my friend tells me you have only yourself]
*
i wanted to be wanted. i wanted to be accepted. i wanted to feel safe.
[you cannot get what you want. you can only desire. forever.]
*
Let me hold you. Let me touch you. Let me have you. Give me all your worries. Make yourself safe in my arms and in my company. Forget everything. Forget that life is cruel, that people are terrible. Forget it in that one embrace. Erase it all. Just let it be at that moment. Will you come? Will you let me come? I'll do it for you. I'll be your shield. I'll be your protection. I'll be your void of worries. I'll be your comfortable space. I'll be your home. Let me. For once, just let me.
*
He is an impenetrable wall, unbreakable. You can throw any amount of love at him and it will not touch him. He moves effortlessly, almost slyly, among throngs of people and takes their shape, absorbs them in their way, repeats the moves most charming to them. He is a mirror that shows you yourself. He is that which makes you face the narcissism inherent in you. Look at him, see yourself, fall in love but it is only your image. He does not see it that way. It is social mobility. For him, it is different. He does not know any other way but he also does not know how to respond to your love and you are left in your own longing, your own images, your own notions, your own ideas. He moves on. You are wrecked. Then you move on, too.
*
the antidote to my loneliness
the antidote to my desire
will look for me:
constantly sucking on the
milk of experience so that
there is a desert raging
inside – hollowness stretching into
an endless infinity of the
night – and it will not go away except
with an elixir of a subtle touch
with the slow germination of a new growth
with the promised persistence of an assured love
*
(2019)
Image: GCU After Rain (2019) by Mustafa Bilal
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