sing me to sleep...

Foreign Window
(Van Morrison and Bob Dylan)

I saw you from a foreign window
Bearing down the sufferin' road
You were carryin' your burden
To the palace of the Lord
To the palace of the Lord

I spied you from a foreign window
When the lilacs were in bloom
And the sun shone through your window pane
To the place you kept your books
You were reading on your sofa
You were singin' every prayer
That the masters had instilled in you
Since Lord Byron loved despair
In the palace of the Lord
In the palace of the Lord

And if you get it right this time
You don't have to come back again
And if you get it right this time
There's no need to explain

I saw you from a foreign window
Bearing down the sufferin' road
You were carryin' your burden
You were singing about Rimbaud
I was going down to Geneva
When the Kingdom had been found
I was giving you protection
From the loneliness of the crowd
In the palace of the Lord
In the palace of the Lord

They were giving you religion
Breaking bread and drinking wine
And you laid out on the green hills
Just like when you were a child
I saw you from a foreign window
You were trying to find your way back home
You were carrying your defects
Sleeping on a pallet on the floor
In the palace of the Lord
In the palace of the Lord
In the palace of the Lord

seconds

before it enters your mouth, you think
the first bite should be enough to do you in
to make you ask for something more than what
you think you have.
with something that looks this boisterously tempting, that's usually the case.
it is like love, this bewildering attraction
at first taste.
everytime, you will find that the present passion overshadows,
if not eradicates, memories of innocence and good intentions.
suddenly you forget the name of the first sweet you have gone back to
time and again when you were
still in trousers and weren't allowed to nurture your sweet tooth.

as with all temporal passions,
what truly matters here
is the now of things.
you have no time to think about consequential calories
or toothaches or the actual probability of diabetes.
this is all you want- pleasure that makes your mouth silky with
sugar- for now.
the past has too many residual claims on you.
it seems ridiculous to contemplate the future at such an early point.
so you decide to forget and embrace the undeniable sweetness
of what is in your mouth, on your unfaithful tongue.

before minutes you realize that
all of it is gone.
you have mercilessly consumed it. it has now become prey to your
mystified hunger.
so it offers itself up, not just in pieces now,
but its entire frosty self.
it trusts that you can finally muster enough courage to
eat it all up.
it recognizes that you are not a god.
it waits patiently for your screaming lust to take over.

pleasure,pleasure,pleasure rises up like moonbeams.

so you get another piece.
you are close to finishing it when
the phantoms of reason (unwelcome, of course,) all come up tapping on your shoulder-
visions of you fat and prostate with
indulgence flash before your eyes;
you in your deathbed, resentfully dramatic.

there is of course, the proverbial battle.
you look at the confection before you.
you remember the time when you were just passing by this store window
and you looked at it with the furor of impatience.
granted, you could not wait to get your hands on her
indifference, on her vulnerability.
you remember feeling disillusioned and cavernous.

this time, you realize that this is not something that you need.
the fact that you even wanted it makes you sorry for yourself.
you push the plate away and wonder how all that
frosting managed to leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

Nights like this...

Most of the time
(Bob Dylan)

Most of the time
I'm clear focused all around,
Most of the time
I can keep both feet on the ground,
I can follow the path, I can read the signs,
Stay right with it, when the road unwinds,
I can handle whatever I stumble upon,
I don't even notice she's gone,
Most of the time.

Most of the time
It's well understood,
Most of the time
I wouldn't change it if I could,
I can't make it all match up, I can hold my own,
I can deal with the situation right down to the bone,
I can survive, I can endure
And I don't even think about her
Most of the time.

Most of the time
My head is on straight,
Most of the time
I'm strong enough not to hate.
I don't build up illusion 'till it makes me sick,
I ain't afraid of confusion no matter how thick
I can smile in the face of mankind.
Don't even remember what her lips felt like on mine
Most of the time.

Most of the time
She ain't even in my mind,
I wouldn't know her if I saw her
She's that far behind.
Most of the time
I can't even be sure
If she was ever with me
Or if I was with her.

Most of the time
I'm halfway content,
Most of the time
I know exactly where I went,
I don't cheat on myself, I don't run and hide,
Hide from the feelings, that are buried inside,
I don't compromise and I don't pretend,
I don't even care if I ever see her again
Most of the time.

----------------

Exactly how I feel. I'm not sure, though, if the lyrics I've posted are all correct. Feel free to correct them anytime.

Women Don't Riot(For N.B.S)
Ana Castillo

Women don't riot,
not in maquilas in Malaysia, Mexico, or Korea,
not in sweatshops in New York or El Paso.
They don't revoltin kitchens, laundries, or nurseries.
Not by the hundreds or thousands, changing
sheets in hotels or in laundries
when scalded by hot water,not in restaurants where they clean and clean
and clean their hands raw.

Women don't riot, not sober and earnest,
or high and strung out, not of any color, any race,
not the rich, poor,or those in between.
And mothers of all kinds especially don't run rampant through the streets.
In college those who've thought it out join hands in crucial times,
carry signs,are dragged away in protest.
We pass out petitions, organize a civilized vigil,
return to work the next day.

We women are sterilized, have more children
than they can feed,don't speak the official language,
want things they see on TV,would like to own a TV--
women who were molested as children
raped,beaten,harassed, which means
every last one sooner or later;
women who've defended themselves
and women who can't or don't know how
we don't--won't ever rise up in arms.

We don't storm through cities,take over the press,
make a unified statement,once and for all:
A third-millennium call--from this day on no more, not me,
not my daughter,not her daughter either.

Women don't form a battalion, march arm in arm
across continents bound
by the same tongue, same food or lack thereof,
same God, same abandonment,
same broken heart,raising children on our own, have
so much endless misery in commonthat must stop
not for one woman or every woman,but for the sake of us all.

Quietly, instead, one and each takes the offense, rejection,
bureaucratic dismissal, disease
that should not have been, insult,shove, blow to the head,
a knife at her throat.
She won't fight, she won't even scream--taught as she's been
to be brought down as if by surprise.
She'll die like an ant beneath a passing heel.

Today it was her. Next time who.
--1998, Chicago

you can check my other link sometime. i'm planning on writing on my former blog again. for variety.:D but of course, i'd still be writing stuff here. it's just harder to access, 'is all.

just when you think that you have finally found the strength to believe, everything just smack dab shits all over you.

serves me right, though.

Remembering

In the back of my mind, there will always be the two of us, waiting. When I find myself thinking of you, I remember worn photographs of past wars, blurry with so much undiluted history.Until now, I find myself saving you by writing countless half-truths and surviving passages from your letters. I believe that if I let you live in me, I myself will never be lost again.

If there is anything I recall, it is not your penchant for sarcasm, nor your ability to cheat at chess, nor your laughter that was never laughter, really, but more of a forced chuckle. I will always remember your loneliness. It was, in a way, your saving grace. This loneliness rose from you as smoke, forming a generous halo around your white, knowing head. That halo would be mistaken for kindness by most, but we would know better. As the nights loomed dark without her, that halo would flourish and beam like a headlight, fueled by your silence.

You were quite the storyteller. I have learned that only men who know the veriest of tragedies usually are. You spun distractions, soft promises, great heroes for us. You could never be a hero to me because I remember days when you were as frozen and mad as any thwarted lover, waiting for your wife to come home.

Til today, it amazes me how, when people talk about marriage, they see it as the appropriate measure for love. Marriage , for most, is the armageddon, the waterloo, the eternal harbinger of endings.But for most, it's a carnival ride that is over too soon, a cork that traps in the resounding irony in an empty bottle.

I realize that it must have been very painful to see her, yet never fully owning her. She was always as free as butterflies and was not as romantic. She never said you were her sunrise. She never said in you, she found all beginnings.

It was the year 1995. The electricity was down. You have just finished telling us a story of how you saved a man from drowning. You were very brave, I'd have to say, to sacrifice yourself in this manner. You never told us what the moral of the story was. You let us figure that out for ourselves.

My brother, who always exhausted himself by mimicking you or indulging in exultant fits while you told us stories, was asleep on the couch. You were in your room, reading by candlelight.

I was bored and decided to spy on you. You were not reading after all but were looking out your window. You were so still. Your back was turned to me, stooped and defeated by years and senseless aching. I could hear you whispering, Come home to me.

You were not a god, after all. Now, I was able to love you. I was touched by your hidden admission, this fall. And since my head was so full of the urgency and the luxury of the concept of saving, I thought I could try and get you out of your unfulfilled love. I would save you. I would be your heroine in this tragedy.

Of course, truth always finds the opportunity to spit at illusions of greatness. Years passed and I didn't get to do much saving. The most that I could ever muster was to serve as your unnecessary solace, someone who had the consistency of tough bricks. You used my strength as an excuse to wait longer, to worship her better. I pity myself sometimes, remembering how content I was just to step into your shadow. But there was nothing I could really do about it. Such is the desperation of unrequited love.

What is strange is, when I was growing up, I felt a strange attraction to people who were patterned after you. During the many stages of my life, I have found myself with people who were left behind, who were suffering, who needed to be raised from cunning variations of death. And I sit there with them and wait for God knows whom or what. Sometimes, the people they wait for come back. These are the people who are easy to forget, who I bury in more than six feet of tender feeling. But there are the ones who are eternally fixated, who become strangers even to themselves because of so much useless hunger. These are the people who I bade goodbye to quickly and without sorrow. But there are those, who acknowledge my presence and turn to me for comfort. These are the people whom I have had the strength to stay with for a time.

After a while, saving will sap the strength out of a person. There are times that I wish that instead of loneliness, you gave me the gift of desirability. I wish you taught me how to be more elusively frail, more interestingly weak, more fearful of aloneness. Maybe then, I would be loved for myself. But these are the things I am dealt with. I know that there truly is no turning back.

It amazes me how I have never found anyone who was intact,as ripe as sunrise or as whole as bright, red apple. I pried people open just to find some semblance of you in their hearts, kidneys, brains.

I realize now that my life is a series of consequences of reliving you.

I believe that you are, finally, the crux of my frustration , all that I am doomed to protect, and all that I will ever have. We had all the tragedies of a cycle, really. It is here, in the splendor of my waiting, that I will remain with all my bewildered happiness. I will sing in peace, until I see you again.

beautiful words

I ask the impossible: love me forever.
Love me when all desire is gone.
Love me with the single mindedness of a monk.
When the world in its entirety,and all that you hold sacred advise you
against it: love me still more.
When rage fills you and has no name: love me.
When each step from your door to our job tires you--love me;
and from job to home again, love me, love me.
Love me when you're bored--when every woman you see is more beautiful than the last,
or more pathetic, love me as you always have:not as admirer or judge, but with
the compassion you save for yourself
in your solitude.
Love me as you relish your loneliness,the anticipation of your death,mysteries of the flesh, as it tears and mends.
Love me as your most treasured childhood memory--and if there is none to recall--imagine one, place me there with you.
Love me withered as you loved me new.
Love me as if I were forever--and I, will make the impossible
a simple act,
by loving you, loving you as I do. - Ana Castillo, I Ask the Impossible

Soundtracks

I got to thinking the other day about movies that have great soundtracks. So far, here's what I've come up with:

top gun

almost famous

detroit rock city

(eddie!!!!!)

say anything

I've added some other links. The PC isn't working that well so I guess you guys have to make do without the pictures.

when harry met sally

the wonder boys

somewhere in time

breakfast at tiffany's

when a man loves a woman

jerry maguire

reality bites

Where's the fine line between hysteria and illumination?

It's been hours and I'm still laughing.

Okay this can no longer be classified as laughter borne out of happiness. This is now bordering on hysteria.

It's friggin tiring me out.

Anyway, visit this link. I like this song. It's part of the soundtrack from the movie The Girl Next Door.

My father on growing up (written in one of his August letters, 2001):

"If the problems that you have encountered when you were 16 are the same problems that you find yourself mulling over when you're 25, it just shows that we haven't accomplished much here."

It's funny how you make me remember so much.

Remembering laughter

"I will not fight events."- Anais Nin

For some utterly bizaare reason, I found myself laughing like a hyena for a full 30 minutes this afternoon. I was laughing so hard that I found it difficult to breathe for a few minutes. Afterwards, my sides ached and I had to take a quick trip to the bathroom. (teehee)

I seriously cannot remember the last time I laughed that hard.

There was no specific cause really. I didn't see a particularly hilarious picture nor did I read a laughable anecdote. I was just suddenly struck (really, this is the most appropriate word I can think of) by the banality and the ridiculousness of everything that's been happening to me. Everything suddenly seemed dastardly funny.

I guess this is a part of my current personality series. I believe that I grow older only during select seasons. Lately, I've noticed that I have (again) been stumbling over variations of coquetry, new clothing lines, new lives. Finally, the season has come to shed skin.

This is not to say that I'll not come back howling at certain issues ever again. I'm just saying that I will try to remember to take things in stride, to remember that I've always had and will always have options. I have to remind myself that inspite of everything that has happened (and maybe is still happening), I still know myself better than anybody and I have not been raised to be mournful and childish. It's good to know that after all the bullshit, my sense of the ridiculous is still intact.

It's amazing how the things that I found hilarious as a sarcastic 16 year old are still the same things that I cringe at now.

I admit that for a time, I did want to fall into a certain role. I tried to emulate, to change (eeps), to drastically morph into someone who I never really had the stomach to be.

I am happy to announce that I am officially stopping today. I have always been happy about myself and I will never change for anyone. Not even for my own sake.

I just finished apologizing to my officemates for the unnecessary ruckus I caused. I really was penitent. After all, not everybody gets lucky enough to be freed in a day.

I didn't know that I'd say it, but Billy Collins should be pretty smug.

This is a poem of his. I especially like The Art of Drowning.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Robert Frost as Oracle

We dance round in a ring and suppose.
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

Cleaning House

Someone drew an irregularly shaped heart on one of the red doors. The practical joker used chalk so it was easy to rub off. I am sitting on the pavement, feeling cheated. I shouldn't be here, rubbing off graffiti and waiting for who knows what. It's a Sunday. On Sundays, I usually like wasting my time and forgetting things.

I came home expressly to have my aunt's ancestral house cleaned. It was 10am and I have been waiting for the cleaners for almost half an hour. Because the house is located near the main road, it is lamentably dusty,even on the outside. The dust motes are unforgiving, almost loverlike in their hold on doors and on the cement walls.

Finally, I see the cleaners crossing the street. The other one is a stranger to me but the other boy used to be our janitor in the building that we owned. I talked to them for a while before putting the key into the lock. We could hardly open the door because of the profusion of electric bills left by the electric company. They managed to pile up and together served as an annoying blocker.

I truly have no intention of paying for the electricity because they were going to take this house anyway. Just the way the others took our own house and the school that my mother spent her whole life building. This effortlessness calls to mind insipid phrases. Easy as pie. Nothing to it. Piece of cake.

This is how my life is now- a fortress of carefully defined words that I have built around myself so that I can justify the things that are happening around me. During my free time, I string together words and tie them on my head. They form a pink, happy bandana.

I let the two cleaners in and I continue sitting on the pavement. I shield my eyes from the sun. This house, it's supposed to be good luck because it faces the sun. We've been trying to sell this house for years now and they say that it's actually bad luck because it is surrounded by funeral parlors. Never mind that this house is a lot cheaper than the others being sold in the other side of the street. Nevermind that this house has a beautiful balcony. Bunch of sissies. I wonder at these people who find strength in superstition. I wonder how they have managed to come this far.

I read the book I have brought with me. Soon, I am finished reading. I feel incredibly dizzy because of the heat. I don't like the sun much. The light gets into my eyes and I am momentarily confused.

I decide to buy something cold to drink from the store next to the house. It feels like summer around here. I realize, suddenly, that this is a strange city. Summer when it's raining in other places. Rainy during summertime.I feel surprisingly conventional and am disgusted with myself for expecting that things should be a certain way when I should know that they never are.

I drink the soda straight from the can. I distrust straws because they don't give me enough of what I need and using them makes me feel like I'm commiting an infidelity. I can hardly see the cleaners because of the crazy dust motes and the heavy furniture. There are still couches and chairs in there. The sofa bed that my mother died in is covered with dust. My father's old tv set is lying on its back, wondering what has happened to our days of splendor.

The cleaners finish with the rooms downstairs. I am still outside, taken aback by how alien this place is to me now. I believe that I have stopped loving it, like I would an irrational lover. Seeing this house again made me realize that the people I have loved are no longer here. They are reduced to smiling faces in sepia, covered in months of neglect and forgetting. This place, this city will no longer serve me any purpose. It only makes me remember, which is, at times as bad as having insiduous nightmares.

The cleaners move on to the other part of the duplex. I hear the banging of chairs that they have probably mishandled because they are tired. More furniture. What I am to do with all this history, with these remnants of war? I am a remnant myself, a blemished residue of things past.

I am scared of being mishandled. I know I make people tired.

I decide that I am finally lonely so I muster up enough courage to go upstairs and see if they were doing their job. The first thing I notice are the green walls. I peep at the green kitchen and look in the green comfort room. So much green. It was my parents' favorite color. I want to be disassociated from the color and take pains not to touch it. What was it supposed to symbolize? Was it life? Luck? When I have a family or a house of my own, I don't want to see a speck of green in it. It would make me too weary.

I look around warily. I have always been afraid of ghosts. People seem to have the habit of foisting their own ghosts at me when, clearly, my cupboards are filled with them.

I climb up the stairs. This used to be my home, I tell myself. I feel ridiculously melancholic and lose my family all over again.

It is dark upstairs. Dust everywhere. I look curiously at the old room where my parents used to sleep in the first year they were married. There was a small sink, a tiny bathroom, then the bedroom itself. Leaning on one of the cabinets was the store sign that belonged to Ma. Melle's Mart in red, looping letters. The rest of the board is green. I touch it and feel her smiling.

I go out of the room and proceed to the balcony but once I get there, I stop, content to just stare at the blank space. There used to be a table there (made of Narra, no doubt) and a chair. Newspapers would be strewn all over the table and also his mug. This was my uncle's and mine's nook. I see myself as a young girl, unmistakably overweight which didn't matter because I was loved. I am peering through his magnifying glass while he is explaining the difference between mites and ants. Do you see the difference? Have I taught you well? He keeps on repeating these questions after every lesson. Then we would go downstairs and pretend to look at movie stars that have suddenly come visiting.

Afternoons in this house were peaceful. This was where I was forgiven anything. This was the house I thought of running away to when I was 5 and furious at my mother. Nevermind the fact that it was a jeepney ride away from the house that we lived in before. Distance to me was inconsequential then.

My uncle would buy pumpkin sweets from the vendors and I would tell him stories. I continued telling him stroies until I was 16. When I reached college, I did not visit anymore. He surrendered to complications of diabetes in their green comfort room one Wednesday night. I was sorry but not repentant. I refused to look at his face in the coffin.

When the cleaners open the door of the other half of the house, I see, beyond the flitering dust an old, heavily-framed family photo. I do not know if it was the heat, or my loneliness, or my guilt for feeling misplaced but they were all there, shouting at me, asking me Do you see the difference? Have I taught you well? They were no longer still and waiting but were reaching out to me, their arms wonderfully elastic and willfull- their voices carefully fashioning caricatures of death out of my soul.

Infidelities

Andrea started jogging on a Tuesday. It was raining then.

She used to belong to the college track team but she smoked too much so she was kicked out when her lungs gave out. She decided to start jogging when she was 15 primarily because she was overweight. There were also other more humane reasons. She liked the feeling of the wind on her face She liked how its carelessness elbowed out the madness that she felt stealthily growing in her because of latent loneliness. She does not recall why, inspite of her being loved most of her life, she always felt like a marooned ship that was always far from knowing home.

She has gone a long way since those times when she felt so insecure that all she could eat were tomatoes. She preferred them ripe and red and ate them all the time. She stopped consuming them when, during a Physics class review, she fainted deadaway. It was the heat she mouthed pleadingly to her crying mother. I wasn't trying to kill myself. It was the heat.

That Tuesday, she decided to take up jogging again because she felt the same madness crawling on her skin, then eventually they found a way into her veins. She stopped wringing her hands for awhile to suit up before she went outside.

She loved jogging on pavements. Every step made her feel hurried, always moving towards something. Most of the time, when she ran, she never thought about a particular destination or a stop. The road that she was on was enough to keep her going, to tell herself to move without precaution nor doubt. The road was all she had.

This resolution actually stemmed from the picture she saw. Girl, mid-20's, with legs that went up to her armpits. Found it pressed in his copy of "Of Mice and Men." She laughs at how fittingly ridiculous it all is. At the back of the picture, enclosed in asterisks was the word Remember.

She wonders why he always seemed to prefer ordinary women. Women who were stunning until they opened their mouths. Women whose eyes made one drown in the sheer magnitude of unused space. Souls bursting open but are always as opaque as moonlit walks and talk over wine.

She is arrogant enough to acknowledge that there was nothing common about herself. Published at 16, she was a wunderkind of sorts in literary circles. Many tried to copy her writing style, her effortless way of putting things in a more practical, less sentimental light. On her wall, she has positioned framed commendations that she likes to look at from time to time.

It is comical how she has fallen flat on her self-worth. All of it meant nothing, after all. She seriously doubted if that woman, whose sensual mouth forms a constant O , even reads anything other than the oppressive women's magazines.

Her friend tells her that maybe the reason why he kept flitting from one paramour to another was because he was bored with her. Bored. The word left a dry taste in her mouth, the way you would feel after you drank so much gin and forgot to brush. Her resolution was her noose, her salvation.

She jogged twice everyday since that Tuesday. Tomatoes were again everywhere- on baskets, in the crisper, on the kitchen table. She went to the gym everyday. And everytime she weighed herself, she smiled a secret smile that told him nothing.

Tom, as usual, was perfect. He lacked nothing, therefore wanted nothing. He never lacked giving out the right words at the time whenever they were needed. They were his versions of chocolates, cinnamon,candied apples. And she would just smile and told him to wait. Wait until I reveal my true self . She smiled like a Madonna she'd seen in church once.

While jogging, she met someone. What drew her to him was his insolence. Tom would never be insolent, nor raggedy-looking, nor mediocre. Paul, he never accomplished anything in his life. No stage play productions, no ladders to fame. And everyday, he fell in step with her while she ran and they talked. His words were blankets for he was never condescending nor expected anything of her. Why would you love me? I've never been loved before. Why would I ask you to take on the impossible?

And at times, he would mumur, You and I, we're the same sad story.

You and I. Words that tasted like tomatoes. Tom always used the pronouns I and you separately. It never dawned on him that linking them would be appropriate. Right.

And she would listen and nod her head and feel sorry for his lamentable ordinariness. She would watch him want her. This interests her for she hasn't been made love to for quite some time. She realizes that it's almost 6 and she still has to prepare dinner.

She and Tom were invited one night to a soiree. She doesn't like these stuffy bores. She always feels, when she walks into one of these parties, that she has grown an extra arm. They seem so silent, so watchful, like cats hunting.

She tries on a black dress and puts on her pearls. She is now 94 pounds- no longer chubby or any cutesy adjective. That Tuesday, she weighed 120.

Tom looks at her. She tells him she won't go after all. She puts her hands on her head and weeps softly. All she can think of is that tomorrow, she and Paul are going out to eat chocolate mousse. He promised he'd bring strawberries.

On Running

The robust landlady in the blue apron says that she hasn't been in for a week now. No one has seen her. The landlady seems fond of talking to strangers, treating them as great friends who she has had over for barbecue parties. She, on the other hand, did not seem to have had any friends. For someone her age, the landlady relays, it is odd that I have never noticed her asking a friend or two over. No male companions, either. It is a wonder to know that she has a sister who is now looking for her. I figured that she lived alone, without family or anything. It was with the way she dressed. I read people well, you know.

She was a good tenant, though. Never bothered me with issues about non-existent rats and pest problems. When she played her music, (she liked classical music, I remember) it was always toned down so low that you had to strain to hear it. Not that I'd ever spy on my tenants. I believe in the sacredness of your own space, if you know what I mean.

My daughter, she talked with her once. Said it was during that night that she was locked out and she seemed to have left her key. She seemed normal enough, says my daughter. Her voice seemed rather uncertain though, as if she's not used to talking that much.

My daughter, she told me (she tells me everything, by the way, that sweet kid) that she accompanied her to her room because that was the night that we had that blackout because of the storm the night before. She went in the girl's room. The girl, it seems, liked books. And candles. It seems that her whole room had a candle in every nook. Maybe later, you could take a peek and see for yourself.

She lit some candles so that she could change her clothes. It was still raining a bit, see. I don't know why she asked my daughter to stay. My daughter, she's a stickler for good manners so I'm sure that she didn't just sit there without being asked first.

While she was in the makeshift dressing room of hers (my daughter, she says that there were embroided peacocks on the partition cloth. you could never tell that she was vain. it's because of the way she dressed.)

Of course, my daughter, she got bored. So she let her eyes roam over the boxes that she found stacked on the foot of the bed. Yes, she was sitting on the bed. It wasn't a real bed, really. More like a futon, she says. The boxes were very plain. My daughter, she takes my best interest at heart, you know. That's why she looked in those boxes in the first place - so that she could find out if that girl was trustworthy or not.

So she rummaged quietly though the boxes. She was careful, mind you, so the girl wouldn't get any ideas and think that she was a-stealing something. The boxes... they held trinkets. On each box, a name was written. I guess they were, well, labeled. The names were all boys names. My daughter, she's a bit of a romantic. Says that they were probably names of the boys the girl loved. Or vice versa. In this crazy world, who knows?

In one box, there were chocolate wrappers and there were hearts drawn all over them. Then, there was an empty plastic bag that used to hold strawberries. My daughter knew they were strawberries because the container smelled so strongly of them. Then there was a piece of string. There was also a brown parcel which smelled of cinnamon.

In the next box, there were slips of paper. Unused vouchers, they seemed. Then, there was a man's slipper which had seen better days. There were also the remains of a yellow candle then a baby's blanket.

The third box held letters. My daughter says some letters were scented, others smelled of coffee. The letters were all written by one person. Adrian, she says the name was. There was also small vial in it labeled TEARS. Very strange, if you ask me.

The fourth box (and mind you, this is the last box that she managed to look in) contained a couple of charm bracelets (two, three? i'm an old lady, i can't remember every detail, see). It also had an old champagne label (an expensive kind, at that). It had a man's bow tie in it and a small tiara that sparkled, even in the darkness.

The girl finished dressing and went out of the peacock dressing room and thanked my daughter. She says though, that when she was leaving, the girl held her hand and kissed it. Like she was apologizing for something. Very strange, if you ask me.

So if you care to, come and take a look at her room. Maybe you can go over some of her things and put them in for inspection. I think, though, that she just went away for awhile. Where else can she go? I'm right, you know. I always am. As I've said, she doesn't look like she's the kind of girl who can go places. I read people well, you know.

My son? Yes, I have one. That boy gives me headaches and heartaches all around. Always alone and quiet.

Plays his flute at night and that's it. No ambition, no anything. Because you asked, I remembered that I need to go to church after our little chat to pray for my boy's poor soul.

When the landlady, opened the door, the room was empty. It looks like it hasn't been lived in for months. There is no sign of the girl, nor are there any boxes stacked around any futon.

They only found one box sitting solemnly in one of the dimmer corners of the vacant room. The inspector lifted the lid. In it was a flute.

Last night I disappeared.
It started in the afternoon
In mid-laughter.
My hands were the first to go.
I saw the smoke rise up from my fingers
as if they were waiting dreams
And the smoke kissed the air and was gone in seconds.
Next were my legs.
They dissolved in minute tears that accumulated in a puddle
That drifted off to lakes and oceans
Where they floated with orange fish.
By night fall, the only part of me left was my singular head
And clearly, it was uncomfortable staying put alone
But after minutes, I looked in the mirror and it
disappeared completely
Leaving me with so much illuminated space that left me
cold and strangely excited.
It was my anxiety that made me run to you,
Naked as the sky.
I did not know what to do
with this empty splendor.

Yet inspite of my screaming, you did not notice that I was there.
You were too busy
Chasing ghosts.

Lessons

The woman who did not know how to dance moved in with the dance instructor on a lazy Tuesday. It was one of those decisions that did not require a long and obtuse deliberation. She was always a practical girl and was never given to romantic expeditions. It just so happened that during the time that she met him, she was in need of an apartment. The third time that they saw each other he proposed (over coffee) that she move in because he had lots of room to spare, so she did.

He admits that he was initially drawn to her because she claimed that she did not know how to dance. When she said it the first time (that Tuesday, when they first met), he thought she was merely being coy and was just trying to get his attention. Surely at this day and age, everyone knew how to dance. To him, it was no longer an art form but a different kind of breathing, of making love. Someone like her made him suddenly unsure. He asked her to stay with him to see if he could make her learn how.

He puts on an old record. She watches the disk whirl until she becomes slightly dizzy. "There's nothing to it really," he says. He demonstrates by swaying his hips. She tries to do it but she looks like she's just pointing at something.

"Listen to the beat,” he says. He moves with the music and closes his eyes. For a moment, he loses himself and forgets that she is there. When he opens his eyes, he sees her staring at him. She looks frozen over, like the rubber duck he has mistakenly left in the freezer the night that he shivered from drunkenness. He shakes his head slightly and puts off lessons for the day.

He does not intend to give up on her. He has been a dance instructor for 5 years now and cannot afford to live with mysteries.

The next day, he lays down yellow foot cut-outs on the floor and arranges them in friendly patterns. He puts on some music and instructs her to listen to the beat and follow the footprints. She awkwardly steps into the cut-outs. She does this anxiously and he sees her shoulders shaking. She misses the beat by a mile. He gives out a whimper which reminded her of the dog that she had when she was five and alone. He looks at the time and tells her he has to go the studio.

The studio where he works is in a two-story building in the shabbier part of the city. The building is orange because it used to be a mental clinic of some sort. He works with Manuel, a worried 26 year old who came up with the idea of putting up the dance studio. Their clientele is composed of 5 middle-aged women who have nothing better to do but gripe about their rich husbands and step on their feet. During summer, they hold classes for young women whom their mothers enroll because they are too fat and unattractive to do anything else.

While she waits for him, she walks around the apartment. She stays in because she has no money to go the city and she got tired of sightseeing alone. She unfolds and refolds her clothes as if they were made of linen. She tries to clean up the place but is careful not to rearrange the sparse furniture because she has no plans of putting her mark anywhere. She’d rather remember these times- these tragic loveseats and tablecloths, these quiet metaphors- than live them. She does not see herself dying here.

She stares curiously at the cut-outs he left on the floor. It is almost nighttime and it's so dark in the living room that the pseudo- feet almost glow. She steps in one and tries to do a little jig. She loses her balance and stumbles a little. She hears her laughter in the emptiness and reaches out to touch it.

He is at it again before dinnertime. He asks her, "Don't you remember the sensation of you floating inside your mother's belly before you were born? It doesn't really require grace, in special cases like yours. You would just have to feel the swiftness of the glow, the tantric flow of emotions."

"My mother was a chain smoker and had a difficult time having me,” she replies. " I was almost never born."

"Feel it." he says.

"My favorite color is red," she whispers.

"What are you talking about?" He looks confused. Distorted, somehow.

The next day, while he is gone, she sits and does nothing. Already, she is tired of picking up and dusting after him. When he is away, she does not think of him. She is neither jealous nor crazy with despondence or any of those things. Love without the trimmings.

There have been others before him, sure. But everything always seemed miscued somehow. Conversations. Surprises. Kisses under bridges. Flowers that wilted too soon.

It is in his face- the disbelief and frustration. She knows that time is running out.

She stares at the cut-outs and gets a pair of scissors that she found on the dinning table. She traces hearts on the paper and cuts them out. They come out irregular and beet-shaped, as displaced as peacocks in winter.

I have loved hours at sea

I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;

First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.

I have loved much and been loved deeply --
Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,I shall be tired and glad to go.

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Although I think Sara Teasdale's work is, at times, a tad too Hallmarky (although she does scan well), I always find myself touched by this poem of hers.