the cusp of wondering

I keep your chair warm with my loneliness.
(The fire burned out so long ago
that the flames have turned to ash
even in my memory.)

The grandfather clock still ticks,
but never proclaims the right time.
The flowers in the vase have created their own autumn
of brown petals on the table.

The tea is always cold here.
Bookmarks become cramped,
always stifled between the same pages.

Everything bears the stains of waiting:

the yellowing piano keys,

the lamps and surfaces now grey with dust,

and most stained of all: the demilunes under my eyes.
They are a shade of purple that can only be achieved by combining
the blue of sadness and the cranberry of wistful patience,
stirring gently,
and thinning with a handful of watery sighs.

I miss the forests of ink in your mind,
I miss your fingers sailing the tangled sea of my hair.
But most of all, I miss not being forever on the cusp of wondering:
forever waiting, frozen for something
that may never return.

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I don't have much to say about this piece, except I wrote it a couple weeks ago and it's one of the better things I've written in the past 6 months. The self-portrait is about 2 years old. In fact, another photo from that 'session' can be found somewhere on this blog. I figured out how to blur parts of the picture, so of course I went for my face. ;)

I stayed up past 3 AM listening to my demons nattering, and have been in a proper foul mood today. But I am now in possession of a flapper dress (vintage, though not from the 20s), a new bio of Freddie Mercury is coming in for me at the library, and I found free sheet music for Fleetwood Mac's 'Songbird', so perhaps today won’t be a total wash after all.

('Songbird' is one of my favourite songs at the moment.)

insanity - 3 A.M.

The absence of snow wakened me last night. The edges of the earth were folding inwards, and the trees were rattling their dry bones.

I thought I saw a stranger hunched in the corner; I thought I saw a forgotten bit of sanity scuttling across the floor.

The feeling I was lying in the wrong bed presented itself to me and then refused to leave. With infrequent breathing, I lay and listened to the sound of nothing humming somewhere in the distance.

I told you not to wake me til my eyes are blue, I mumbled at the blank, dim expanse of ceiling.

The sheets were taut over my body: a cocoon, a straitjacket. I found them comforting: knowing they, at least, would hold me forever.

My thoughts hopped around the room, with heartbeats as delicate as those of winterbirds.

Oh, how silent the birds are, was the last thought to slip across my mind, as once more I slipped into a sea of uneasy sleep.

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{Though not what originally inspired this piece, I dedicate this post to the wee hours of the morning and my tendency to wake up during them and exist in an incoherent state, where I am technically awake, but still asleep in many ways.}


{Photo is the cover of Jesca Hoop's EP, Snowglobe.}

all the lonely people

Playing piano in a darkened room:
'Eleanor Rigby' (because I need to know
where all the lonely people belong)

I was playing
and the keys
gleamed like phantoms;
tender ghosts that glowed with solace
and sustenance

the hours and weeks before
had been full of voiceless screams,
of sighs and trembling

the ghosts and the
bittersweet darkness
of their ebony threads
were the sole thing that could
bind these tatters of mine

they filled me, stopped the disintegration
(I'm a grey colour now, but still here)

And my fingers keep on pacing,
always looking for their songs


(for this is the only way
I know how to speak.
This is the only way
I can communicate.

Listen;
know me. )


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My emotional hurricane has calmed to a rainstorm. It's much easier to live with, but I'm tired of being anywhere from damp to soaked all the time; I just want to be dry!

On a happier note, I started a new journal yesterday! I don't know why, but I love starting a new journal (though finishing the old one is somewhat bittersweet). Through the years, especially when I was younger, I've kept various diaries... but it is only my journal(s) that I have stayed faithful to.
I kept my first journal from December 2000 to January 2009. My second journal I kept from February 2009 to, well, August 2011! (As you can see, my writing habits have greatly spiked in the last few years.)
The journal I have just started was given to me for Christmas by my brother.


I love it so much since I'm a Beatles fan of astronomical proportions and Abbey Road is one of my favourite albums. It has been lying around my room tempting me for around 8 months, so I'm excited to finally be writing in it!

Eh, it's the little things in life, isn't it?




{Both photos by me.}

a missed connection of minds

He put down the stack of my photographs he'd been flipping through. "I didn't know you were such a good photographer."

I still wouldn't look at him. "That's because you don't know anything about me."

"I know that you are a lonely person."

I look up startled, wondering if my loneliness glistens from my eyes.

He taps the stack of pictures he just put down. "Most of your pictures are of nature. The only photos that contain people are self-portraits or crowd scenes where no one is distinguishable."

Heat sears through me, heat of the indignation that he, of all people, bared the truth so effortlessly.

"You should have been a detective," I snap.

Oh! What makes this way? I never wanted to be a porcupine-heart.

Just leave. I plead in my mind. It's not that I mind his presence so much, though my heart is beating uncomfortably fast, and my limbs feel twice as gangly. I'm just afraid any moment I will burst into tears. I don't want him to see me cry. (Though maybe my heated tears will melt this lump of ice in my throat.)
----------------------------------------------------------

She must hate me. She wants me to leave, I can tell.

Her discomfort is practically radiating from her, maybe that's why I feel so warm.

I shouldn't have stayed. I should have left the moment I saw she was the only person in the empty art room. My mother has always said that I don't know when to give up. That may be true sometimes, but I do know I should give up now.

She's right, I don't know her. But I've never wanted to know someone so much, and to be known. Then I could tell her the something that desperately wants to be said:

"Yes, I surround myself with people and parties. Yes, every moment of my life is stretched to the maximum with gaiety and noise made by myself and other people. And I'm not a photographer so there is no evidence to support this, but... I'm lonely too."
----------------------------------------------------------

I can hear him heading for the door.

(I turn the knob and look back at her taciturn figure.)

I can feel his eyes boring a hole through me. Go on - go on with your wonderful life, leave me and my pathetic self alone.

(Her face is obscured by her dark hair. Perhaps I should...? But I'm just a coward and I open the door.)

The shutting of the door sounds like a soft apology, a sigh of lost opportunity.

Goodbye.

mostly true musings on missing

I put my memories of you on the gramophone and played them all night long.
I awoke in the morning, stretched out on the floor like a cadaver.
All I felt was sadness and confusion. Had I awoken from a dream? I don’t remember.
But the sadness and confusion decided to make themselves at home; one nestled in my right pocket, the other in my left.

The rain sang drowsily all morning and dampened the world's colours. I sat at the window and mused how if I should touch any part of the wet world, the colours would come off on my hand.
I contemplated going outside and tracking the grass's green into the worn, grey asphalt. Perhaps I should have run my hands across our blue car and then streaked my fingers across the sky, making it blue again.


I took the poem with the cracked frame off the wall and replaced it with a Monet: vague, colourful, whoami?; it seems to fit my life right now.

Do you know how to say 'I miss you' in French? 'Tu me manques.' That literally translates as 'You are missing to me'. I love that.
The phrase 'I miss you' seems so solitary, as if the missing process only concerned 'I', myself. But 'tu me manques': your presence is evident, you are the subject of the sentence.
Likewise, you do not miss me, I am missing to you. Je te manque. We are a whole that makes no sense apart.

At first, I thought I would be fine. Now I feel as if my subconscious has been dyed the colour of your eyes. Underneath every thought and action it’s there, a wandering, green phantom. I can't wash it out no matter how hard I try. Though perhaps I was hardly trying at all... (It's too wearying to care enough these days.)

It seems to be my fate to miss the times and places that have gone, and the people too. The times and places cannot be helped, but the people... perhaps I am at fault. Maybe there is something I could have said or done, so that I would not be here, feeling lost and dreaming of you. Yet there is a thought that haunts me: I am happier this way, missing you. That I have made you transcendent as an intangible and your reality could never measure up.
For all I know, that could be true. But it has no chance of being proved or amended because... tu me manques (and I fear it will last forever).





{1st picture taken from text of "Miss Bishop" by Bess Streeter Aldrich, 2nd picture taken by me [the painting is, of course, by Monet], 3rd picture is of Paul and Linda McCartney taken from his 'Maybe I'm Amazed' music video.}

dusty nonentities

My days are gathering a same-ish hue;
they are a collection of dusty nonentities.

We keep driving into the city where the rows
of houses dance cheek-to-cheek.
They aren't right.

None of this is right.
I would prefer a home in the country.
A wallflower house, isolated,
that blends into its surroundings
by donning a gown of ivy.

It seems the ugly things of life
stick to me like spiderwebs.
Though I tear them off with shaking hands
I can still feel their ghost threads
clinging.
Leave me alone, please.
Everyone just leave me alone.

I feel corseted.
And my words are pounding behind my ribcage
full of life.
But they cannot escape their bony prison
and I don’t know how to set them free.

So my songs go unsung
because right now my lungs barely have
enough air to breathe,
let alone give life to a melody.
Even one that could fill the empty spaces
my life is crowded with.

I've lost my vim.

{It's just been one of those weeks. One where I can't concentrate and nothing gets done. I haven't been sleeping enough, my words stick in my throat, and my emotions are in an uncharacteristic turmoil. WHEE! I think I'm mainly frustrated because I've been home alone quite a few times this week and I haven't taken any advantage of the fact. I usually use my rare alone time to work on my songwriting but I just haven't felt inspired at all, lately, so I don't even try. No wonder Time hates me; I do nothing but waste what he gives me.}

{Both pictures are of Françoise Hardy and I no longer remember where I found them.}

As I play my piano...

When everyone has left, that's when I play.
I play the loneliness I don't want to speak of...
No one is there to judge or praise the way I play my piano.
If there's a song I love I can play it over & over.
No one gets annoyed.
No one tells me to stop.
Hours pass, I play on.
Exhaustion consumes me...
My eyes burn, my back aches
But I stay alive through the familiar notes.
My hands almost move mechanically over the keys,
But it comforts me.

Picture: Catherine Ireton from God Help the Girl