Temporary arrangements
Perception sharp like the glimmer on the sliver of silver that adorns her ear, her hair jet black, like mine, except I was born with it and wasn't given the option to change. Words dropped like abandoned fruit, to be picked up by another to savour, to taste, to gorge upon. Good conversation is like a bountiful orchard.
When I left, I smelled like smoked-out memories suffocated by history. The air spelled the end of yet another day, another anonymous day in a record that no one is keeping. Deep in the night of the tunnels, demons sometimes creep up upon you if you don't stand guard. I fought my battles, armed with a book of short stories on condoms.
Do you count days? I count days. I measure the hours by the beats of songs and the slow release of flavour at the tail-end sip of a wine.
I let myself be carried away. "Be involved," he had said. And perhaps that's the simplest philosophy of all.
The wait is finally over and I spent hours sifting through belongings, reconciling parts of myself spread thinly over the last ten years. Throwing away the superfluous, the unnecessary, things which ought to be forgotten so that one has no choice but to move on. I have too many books, I keep too many possibilities and I don't own enough clothes. I'd bookmarked a passage in an old book that I'd read once, remembered, but was never quite able to read again. It was about throwing out old tea in your teacup so you can fill it with new tea.
I try to make sure my days remain perpetually fresh. I wear a dozen red roses like an advertising placard, "Look at me, I am loved". They kept asking if it were a special occasion, and the truth was much too long to explain, so I simply said, "No" and hid behind the explosion of red.
Posted by sniffles at June 02, 2005 10:46 PM