There I sit
in the tranquil bath of
efflorescence
All whilst the surroundings
keep bashing the pulse
of ambulance sirens,
children screaming
from a nearby school yard,
dogs beating their tails
like little whisks
in a batter full of
freshly cut grass

Keeping my eyes closed
I envision someone
passing me by,
perhaps in the company of a small dog
running up to me,
clumsily with its tiny paws
making harmless scratches
on my bare knees,
and me exchanging a few words
with its owner
Maybe I make a comment
about the weather
that appraises
the shifting of seasons

Oh,
(“I could never really tell if that girl Cheryl was a flake or a flirt”)
the cherry blossoms
and their ephemeral life
that envelope me in their fragrance

I remember the line
in some old house track,
that lonesome statement repeating itself
like a broken record,
trying to create a mantra
that dissolves in the listener's
consciousness
as smoothly as honey
dissolves in hot water

Flake?
Flirt?
I bet Cheryl just wasn’t that into you
I bet she was busy
exploring life amidst the brief
blossoming period
of a month a year
She writes portraits
Or rather
she has found someone
who writes them for her
She considers herself a compiler of assets
Her collaborator could be
compared to an archivist
Someone who analyses content
It was no easy task to find someone
suitable
for the extent of her documentation

Sometimes she asks herself,
why recompose something so compostable
as the memory of someone?
When you miss someone,
what is it, you miss about them?
An image, a picture?
Where in your presence do they reside
when you forget about them?

The way they look at you when they ask;
should I get you a coffee?
Their voice on the other line,
breaking up through a weak connection,
telling you they are on their way,
and the way they smell
when they come pick you up from your work
Waiting outside,
the way they look
at the people passing by
and the passers by
gaze on them
How they speak
to someone over the counter

You lock eyes,
for the first time
How did they feel the first time you touched?
The way they get dressed,
asking for your opinion,
what color suits them the best?
The way they undress
How they fold their clothes
after they’ve been washed

Open the fridge, open a window,
ask for a lighter, gaze at something odd,
in the periphery of your shared frame

Is it the way they touch you
when they try to reach you,
reach through you,
that stays
when everything else has departed?
My routine is dear to me,
shoot me!
I’ve come to rely on routines
In the absence of external
and seasonal change

At first the adherence to routine
prompted a sense of memory loss,
as I’ve taught my memories
to accompany the patterns
of seasonal and cyclical
metamorphosis
then I found a mnemonic routine

As I like doing from time to time,
I went to see my neighbor yesterday,
one of few left in our street
She invited me to relax on her sofa,
with her cat
playing with the paper wraps
from an old hamburger,
and asked if I’d eaten
as I looked boney
gazing at my body
as trying to pierce through all my layers
I’d twined myself with

My neighbor’s apartment was right above
the former McDonald’s shop
and as desperation does to people,
she’d recently abandoned her
nutritional ideologies
for frozen burgers
from her former in-house butcher

She said she was tired,
couldn’t make plans ahead any longer
and no crops
would grow at this temperature
Even the greenhouse
that she had built
was too cold
and the glass was starting to break
Regulated temperature is fine,
when you know things on the outside are shifting,
but I can’t find myself breaking from my lethargy,
she said and asked me a third time
if I was sure I didn’t want something

After we’d shared a strong drink
we said goodbye,
embracing one another
She asked if I was sure
I didn’t want to spend the night?
Despite my yearn for another body
I returned home to fall asleep
at my regular hour
Knowing that I’d need to be somewhere
within the hour
Was it all just a
sophisticated déjà vu?
The things she had seen before
was perhaps just a
confused hippocampus?

It’s not that I roll back my eyes
and let her demon possess me
Our deal is that I
create new stories
and narratives
from fragments of her life
She holds the seeds in her hand
and I tell her
where to disperse them

I am her ghostwriter
But she is the real ghost
Our roles really confuse me sometimes

When things get to my head
I like to chew eucalyptus gum
and light some incense
that smells like a herbalist
got abducted by a team
of researchers from Primark
to formulate
a scent for their
loungewear section
It’s not very far off
I actually got my incense
from the TK Maxx-store
opposite my flat
It was just there,
in the abandoned mess
on the floor,
a few months back,
when our pipes had started to freeze

Today I light the incense
and I tell myself;
I need to set my own boundaries
I make time for her
similar to my therapist
making time for me
in their calendar
With patience,
understanding
and a firm border,
and not with bewildered compassion

When I once ask her about all of this
composition of self,
she tells me this:

<3 - 2023-12-29 13:36:28 - <3<333333

adolphus50@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:37 -

- 2022-10-06 00:56:37 -

adolphus50@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:35 -

joan14 - 2022-10-06 00:56:35 -

Developer - 2022-10-06 00:56:33 -

Developer - 2022-10-06 00:56:25 -

shannon_boyer@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:09 -

- 2022-10-06 00:56:08 -

shannon_boyer@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:06 -

joan14 - 2022-10-06 00:56:05 -

shannon_boyer@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:03 -

joan14 - 2022-10-06 00:55:57 -

118 Yundt Burg - 2022-10-06 00:51:14 -

- 2022-10-06 00:51:14 -

118 Yundt Burg - 2022-10-06 00:51:13 -

Suite 574 - 2022-10-06 00:51:12 -

118 Yundt Burg - 2022-10-06 00:51:11 -

Suite 574 - 2022-10-06 00:51:03 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:45 -

- 2022-10-06 00:50:44 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:43 -

nico.franecki@bdcimail.com - 2022-10-06 00:50:42 -

nico.franecki@bdcimail.com - 2022-10-06 00:50:40 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:38 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:21 -

- 2022-10-06 00:50:19 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:17 -

baylee_harris@bdcimail.com - 2022-10-06 00:50:15 -

baylee_harris@bdcimail.com - 2022-10-06 00:50:13 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:08 -

E - 2022-04-11 00:22:06 - so beautiful

- 2022-04-11 00:21:49 -

- 2022-04-11 00:20:38 -

*_* - 2022-03-31 12:01:05 - I love it!!