Just To Be Clear, You Can Do This Too

“(To be loved means to be consumed. To love means to radiate with inexhaustible light. To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.)”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. (via xshayarsha)

Leonard Cohen, from Parasites of Heaven

I’ve been thinking about you. I think you know. We both dance around what-shouldn’t-unfold.

come teach me why flowers grow better with blood-based fertiliser. come bury me in the ripe plum of your body, tangle around me like ivy. see, im so tired of dragging around this empty casket of a mind. see, i know I shouldn’t but baby, I’m fucking hopeless over you.

I cup my hands around all the sweet things in the world to try and taste some form of optimism, some form of “it’ll be okay”. I’ve been feeling low and bogged down by all the hatred in the news. These days it feels like all the sweetness falls right between my fingertips, like sand. The world is such an overwhelming, cruel place that it’s awfully hard to remember the good things. The love, laughter and tiny mementos of goodness in everyday life fades under the screech of death, hate and pain. please hug your lover tighter today. please call your mother and believe her when she says it’ll all be alright. please remember that beautiful things still exist, even when the world is anything but.

Trigger warning:

I tried to end my life exactly a year ago today. I came dangerously close to dying, spent weeks in a hospital. my life completely changed. this morning I woke up early to a quiet world, save for some birds outside my window. I saw the night change to dusk turn to morning and couldn’t help but remember how I would’ve missed something so wonderful if I died. how I wouldn’t have seen the flashes of orange and gold and honey swirl and change in the sky. how the endless black turned to sunshine. how depression didn’t win.

coffee, the sunrise and the buildings awash in the light of a new morning all around me. how lovely is it to be alive. to experience all this busyness and splendour. how the clouds whisper good morning and the heavens themselves shine through each crack in the sky. how the sun calls my body to wake. how the birds tell me today is a new day and aren’t there just endless possibilities. the promise of a new sunrise makes me so glad I’m still alive.

I love him, more than he knows. I’m waiting for him to come back from the farmers market with flour and bread and rum and peaches. Two hands wrapped around a mug, sipping strong coffee and sitting on the kitchen counter, evening sunlight washing everything in gold and honey and mauve. Please, leave your shoes at the door and shout that you’re home. Please, one more kiss before we turn the kitchen light off.

I love him, more than my mouth could ever admit. He sits in bed, blanket draped across his chest as he watches anime. He’s forgotten his glasses so he squints. I laugh. He calls me “my love” in our mother tongue and kisses my neck, telling me I smell of honey and coffee. Please, linger on my body for a little while longer. Please, keep your palms around my waist till I tell you it’s getting too late.

I love him in words that don’t fit comfortably in my mouth. Softness has never been my first language. Usually romantic jargon sits awkwardly in my throat but god, does it spill like glossy honey when I think of him. God, does it turn sour into sweet, bronze into gold. The soft glow of the lamp illuminates his face whilst he sleeps. He breathes softly and sighs, murmurs for me to please come to bed.

honey, you’re the sweetest thing.

“Don’t talk to me, please don’t talk to me. My words in the dream are like Hamlet’s ghost, the prophecy spurts old blood, one hundred Ophelias of thought have died. Don’t talk to me, please don’t talk to me.”

— Moikom Zeqo, from ‘Don’t Talk to Me’, I Don’t Believe in Ghosts: Poems from ‘Meduza’ (trans. Wayne Miller)