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.}

a love letter

My darling iridescent angel,

Today I cannot shake you from my mind. I believe my dreams must've been full of your singing, you adorable siren.
These days I am strangely silent, as if everything I want to say doesn't seem worth saying to anyone but you. You--you make my favourite topics even more dear, with the way you firmly grasp them and spread them out before you--the way they make your eyes come alive.

I don't know how much longer I can go without hearing your laugh and seeing the way your eyes and nose screw up with merriment. I am saving up amusing things to tell you--I've got quite a trove of them now. I suspect, though, when I finally am able to be with you I shall lose them all in the flood of my long awaited happiness.

My hands are cold. Every single bit of me is cold. I wish you were here to warm me.
The shipwreck known as me has never longed to land anywhere but in your arms, I hope you know that. Every day spent all these miles from you makes that painfully apparent.

All my love to you and many kisses. For the two little rascals, as well. (I hope you tell them stories of me every night, so they are not forgetting their absent father who would really much prefer to be with them then stuck in a mire of endless business.)

I love you for always--till the moon crumbles, till the sun turns to ash, and far beyond that too.

Ever your incurably infatuated husband,

C.E.


Postscript - Make sure you write your reply in the strongest ink you can find--I always fear I'll fade your words with my constant readings.

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I finished reading the biography Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy - A Lost Generation Love Story by Amanda Vaill yesterday and for some reason it inspired me to write this imaginary letter. There weren't really any love letters in the book, but spending time in the midst of that era (n.b. the 1920's and 1930's) and its people (the Murphys, the Fitzgeralds &c.)inspired me. Actually, it wasn't till I was looking up a picture of Sara Murphy that the letter started coming into my head. That would be the picture above, by the way. Isn't she lovely? She also happens to share a name with one of my favourite people... :)
The initials C.E. were pulled out of thin air, in case anyone was wondering.


Still don't really feel like talking about life. I am feeling pretty positive about this new year, though. I hope everyone else is too!

the wanderer

tranquil roaming, wind knocking against my soul.
the spaces 'neath my eyes look kissed by the lavender wings of the moths that would fly up against the stars on summer nights.
summer nights--oh, strange they should come up again, just when the scar wrapped around me became another irrelevant story. twas you! your doing. you had me in your jaws; caused me cringes in the ringing silence between clock strikes.

you made a wanderer out of me.

domesticity is no way to live when one's hands are too raw to even pick up the truth. you were too, too anchored to your reality. what call could i answer but that of transiency?
now a wanderlust beats where cowardice once lay. power in every step, though my bones have magnified and delirious perseverance is my main emotion.

it is autumn & i know i will fall with the rest.

as the leaves flame & break away, i watch: drifting to my knees, admiration on the tip of my tongue. beautiful, i sigh. beautiful.
i reach a hand up to catch their whispery caresses. things are so beautiful when they are dying, i murmur.
the earth reaches to hold me; a rustle under my head, a last rustle of my heart.
beautiful! i am beautiful!





{I don't know what this is, really. It was written one recent midnight, and I was so happy to actually have a story to tell. I think while writing, I unconsciously had in mind conversations I'd had with my friend Jessica about autumn and transiency and such.
The picture is by me, and was taken on our back porch on a lovely, lonely rainy autumn afternoon. Those are my fat feet, yes. :P}

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.)
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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."
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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.

her spring, his winter

I couldn’t sleep last night.
I could smell the winter on your skin and its dry, bitter scent clogged my mind.

I lay beside you. Felt you so close, so far. I listened to the gentle ocean swell of your breathing, so much deeper than the uneasy waters of mine.
I slowed my breathing, synchronized it with yours. But my heart screamed faster, faster so I sped ahead, leaving you behind.

The air in the room was bland, neither cold nor warm. As if my boiling agitation and your frozen stillness had cancelled each other out.

I could hear thunder clearing its throat in preparation for a debate with lightning. Disentangling myself from the sheets and your smothering frigid-sleep, I opened the window as the raindrops started their patient tapping.
The argument between surly thunder and passionate lightning was fully underway. Through their chaos, a breeze reached its hand in my window. It stroked the skirt of my nightgown and ran its damp fingers through my hair.
It smelled of spring. It said come.

I almost took the offered hand of the breeze. I leaned towards the window, the black night and the rain.
But I looked over to your bed just as the lightning swore an oath that echoed between the bedroom’s narrow walls.
I saw you, in that flash of light. You were awake, watching me.
Only vaguely did I see the paleness of your skin, the purple smudges under your eyes, your half-open lips, the bristly hint of a beard.
Your eyes I saw clearly. They met mine for a second. They looked at me as if I were a ghost, a stranger. Your clouded vision had sharpened and in them I saw a fever. A desperation that belied your stiff exterior.
I felt like a criminal, a thief, a murderer.
I shut the window slowly. It closed with a dull thud, shutting out the elements that had offered a newness, a coming alive. I pulled the curtain over the argument that still droned on and, almost ashamed, slunk back into bed.

You pulled me close to you with your cold hands, laid your lips against mine.
Your kiss tasted of snow.

We lay entwined, your bare branches twisted up with my budding vines.
Soon you drifted into sleep again. I lay, ear pressed against your chest, and listened to your heart, trying to learn its pattern, trying to slow my heartbeat to parallel yours.
I couldn’t.

And I don’t know how long this can last. For there is spring in my soul which I can stifle for no one… No, not even you.
Someday I must break away from your stagnant, icy slumber. I must bloom; I must leave.
But oh, I think I shall always miss you, my other half, my winter-soul.

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

I didn’t feel you leave my side;
didn’t feel your warmth slip away.
But I awoke.
I saw you, at the window.
Saw you illuminated, your nightgown waving around you.
My little bird, perched for flight.
And I could no longer ignore the fact I’d caged you too long.
I must let you go.

Tonight I am selfish.
Tonight I want you.
I pull you back.
But I know I will set you free,
my dearest sparrow-heart,
before you are forced to escape.

this is our house.

On the mouldering façade of the house, the once intricate tracings of ivy have grown into a thick fur.
But even those resilient green tendrils have begun to wither away...

This is our house.
This is where we make a semblance of life.
This is where the atmosphere integrates decaying, whispered confidences with a shivering solitude.
This is where gravestones grow overnight, quietly and effortlessly like ghoulish mushrooms.

We might as well deliberately cultivate weeds in our garden since all that grows there is a poisonous regret that chokes anything else that tries to develop.
{Vindictive thorn pricks with no rose to alleviate the sting.}

The sun shines everywhere but never seems to penetrate the haze we linger in.
All we see of the sunbeams are the shadowed bruises that trail behind them.
{For all our inner fog we might as well live in darkness.}

Ghosts inhabit these walls, to be sure.
We live in a wary submission to the company of these in a phantasmal beings.
{Often I wonder which will crumble first, this house or this family.
And if we were gone... would the ghosts cease to be?}

This is our house.
We live here because we must.
We live here because we cannot forget.

{Picture found here.}

the boy with the camera.

To them I am "the boy with the camera" .
Goodnaturedly, they laugh and tease -
Asking me if I 'ever part with it? Do I take it off when I sleep?'

I shrug and smile at their jokes cause I know they wouldn't understand,
that I'm happier viewing their world through my camera lens.

I need my camera to hide behind so no one sees the real me.
And the simple shades of black, white, and grey put me at my ease.

Many people pose for me, I forget them after a while.
Except that girl with the laughing eyes and tantalizing smile!
I wish she wouldn't haunt my dreams every single night
With long black hair, smart grey dress and skin so very white...



{My note: I have no idea what inspired me to write this. Also, it wasn't supposed to be a poem but it kind of worked out that way, hehe. So, please pardon the shaky rhymes.}


{Photo of: Ringo Starr, From: A Hard Day's Night.}

Porcelain Love

As a young girl, I had many dolls that were made up of different things... cloth, plastic, vinyl, porcelain... I loved them all. Even my porcelain dolls who always seemed so indifferent. When I held them close, their skin was so cool against mine.
No matter how many childish kisses and caresses I lavished upon them, they never warmed up. A blank, glassy stare would be the only reward for my efforts.

O, you, my love, must be made of porcelain!
It is so clear to me now...
This is why you never let your emotions show; why you never seem to really see me...

I never stopped loving my porcelain dolls, in hopes that someday they might respond to my gentle touch.

Just know, I shall do the same for you, my darling, porcelain love.
Someday your hard exterior will crack and I know a responsive human flesh must lie underneath.
Maybe then, you will love me back?


{Picture by me, of me and one of my porcelain dolls, Emily.}

The Old Man

“My eyes are lonely,” the old man said,
“They have no one to wink at.”
I looked at him and his wrinkled face held more beauty than my own.
His hand was cold, his lips were dry
He didn’t shed a tear.

The stories he told the children who once revered him as hero
are now laughed at by the same children, who think they have grown up.

“Smile lass, for me, one more time. The tide is going out.”
Reassuringly, I squeezed his hand,
though I was not sure I’d be able to do it…
But somehow I managed one smile;
My last one for the day.
It was shaky and watery, but still a smile.
He smiled back and closed his eyes.

I sat and listened to his rasping breath,
feeling futile, so very helpless.
Just watching and waiting for the sad, but natural, inevitable.
All, the sudden, his still-bright eyes were open,
looking into mine.
“Having you here is all I need, lass.”
He said, simply and then slowly closed his eyes.

(How had he always understood me so well?)

A few more raspy breaths…
Quiet.

For an hour more, I held his hand
Not wanting to let him go
Just gazing, for the last time, upon his wrinkled face,
Wistfully imagining he looked content.
Already I missed the funny, gruff way he had of expressing his emotions…
And I thought about how much he meant to me –
The old man, who was no relation,
but was more near to me than any flesh and blood could ever be.