Stretch

Note: Reader discretion advised.

Nobody told you this.

That the desert will feel this cold at night. A cold that permeates through to the marrow of your consciousness. Till you can't feel anything else but a dense blue haze freezing the behind of your eyes. Till your thoughts start chattering about inside your head, like icicles inside a matchbox.

That you won't know how far you've come until you're too far out to go back. That then it is but natural for you to feel vulnerable. That having experienced your vulnerability, it is a logical progression to pretend otherwise. That pretty quickly you grow into a routine of pretend and feign. That then, one day, tired and weak-kneed, you will give in to feeling whatever it is that you've not been permitting yourself to feel. That whatever it is, it will leave you crying, heaving, retching, will make you want the night to open its arms and take you in.

Nobody taught you anything.

To walk that emotional highrope between overconfidence and depression. To play shadow chess with pieces of yourself. To weave light from drops of darkness. To plunge a knife straight into your heart, watch the blood drip, then pull it right out and bring yourself back to life.

I'm teaching you this.

Fuck around with your mind. Turn it inside out. Try it on now and if it doesn't fit, keep fucking till it does. Feed yourself bits of your heart. See how they taste. Let your feelings simmer on a hotplate till they suit your palate. If something doesn't, spit it right out and pick the next one. In case you thought otherwise, you don't need a soul. Souls are for suckers.

I'm telling you this.

There is no desert.

There is no cold.

There is no you.

Everything's changed.

Nothing's the same.

Go now.

Idyll talk

Boundaries are crafty things. You breach them, break free, push them out as far as you can, pretend they don't exist, fool yourself into thinking you've escaped them, but they will always pull you back.

I see you sprawled on the bed like this and I have a feeling I know how angels look when they are sleeping.

Five more minutes. The alarm will go. But until then the peaceful rhythm of your breathing pervades the room. Every morning this room feels full of your soul, exhaled in tiny puffs throughout the night, for me to breathe in and fill my lungs when I wake up. I'm grateful for that.

It's good to wake up before you. This way I can see how ungainly you can become if only you would let yourself; how your limbs lie askew, lacking in their natural gracefulness; how your otherwise well-mannered mouth lies open, blissfully unaware of my surreptitious gaze; how your carefully disheveled hair is now a clumsy mop covering most of your face.

Yesterday, somebody asked me a question. An important question.

It was only after I finished answering that I realized I had used your words, your lines, your answers. A grin and a shake of the head later, I was back at work.

I bend down to your ears and tell you about this rather curious incident. You mumble something about keeping it quiet.

You look beautiful. I tell you this too. When you are sleeping. You mumble some more. Yes, precious, I know I'm a little mean. But then I like talking to you when you're sleeping. In the silly hope that I may figure in your dreams. Also because, sometimes, there's not enough space between two people to accommodate two sets of feelings; especially feelings of the magnitude you and I possess for each other. So yes, I talk to you when you're sleeping. I'm perfectly fine with that. Maybe you're not but then how would you know huh? Wait. Do you talk to me when I'm sleeping? Hmmm ... now that would be very naughty.

Sometimes, seeing you asleep, I wonder where you wander off to behind those closed eyelids, think about what those fluttering eyeballs might be seeing. There have been times when I've wanted to ask you about your nightmares. But then I was -- and am -- content holding you close till you fell asleep again. Some day, maybe, you'll tell me; you'll tell me about those magical lands you go visiting every night, free from the pressures of circumstance and the demands of protocol; you'll tell me what makes you wake up on some mornings with a twinkle in those soft lovely eyes; you'll tell me what scares you too. And as you tell me, I'll hold you closer. And listen intently to every word that you will say.

There is so much that I don't know about you. But then there's so much that I don't reveal too. Yes, I know it worries you a little that my eyes don't tell you a lot. I also know how courageous you are to believe in me despite that. Especially when you're so fluent in the language of the eyes. But then how do I tell you that I hide myself in between your worlds? That the only way for you to truly know me is to sleep and yet not sleep?

Perhaps, the resulting distance because of this lack of knowledge really doesn't matter. Yet, with every hectic day, when the world forces our lives apart, when uncertainty pulls us asunder, this distance only grows. Only for us to furiously converse through the evenings and the nights, in a desperate bid to come closer again, till you fall asleep out of exhaustion from too many thoughts thought and too many words spoken.

Running to stay at the same place.

Yet we try. Not because we have to, but because we want to.

And then there are times, like today, when I get tired of the purposefulness of our words, when I feel like tying my share onto a balloon and setting them afloat in your general direction without worrying about whether they will reach you or not.

At times like this, I talk to you when you're sleeping.

And my lips are slowly getting used to the intimacy of whispering your name between them.

One more minute. The alarm will intrude rudely. You will wake up, like a diver coming up for air. And in the ensuing sloppiness of your movements, when your arms flail out, when you reach for me in that endearing half-asleep-half-awake way, when your love lacks the sophistication that you insist on imposing upon it, I will steal a kiss, or two, so that I may feel the trembling hope of heaven on your lips ... for one more day.