i want your flowers like babies want god's love

I will be sad not to spend the fall with you. I drive down these streets, each of which is a memory of you. Roots force their way through the hardened tar, leaves coat my car and like incessant papercuts I am reminded of every memory of you, every memory I had yet to make and now never will. And as I watch the colours fade I will imagine you were there with me, leaning against the white bark of an ancient tree.

I will be sad to spend winter alone. It's as cold as cancer here in those months, and I will be sad not find myself wrapped up in your warmth in the mornings. I will regret that you made me see a season of my life in black and white. I may try thaw your heart by the fire while mine breaks like ice, but when I look outside I will be reminded of the fact that everything is dead.

I will be sad not to start afresh with you. I will be blind to new life, turn my back on the endless potential of new beginnings and I will not notice the new colours surrounding me. I will hate myself every day for wanting your flowers, and every day I will mourn that they are dead.

I will, perchance, fall in love with summer once more. And I will be sad to know it will end the same way. In the battle for love, I will die again. But more tragic than anything else is that it will not be worth dying for.

There is no other you.

i set fire fire to the rain

The arum lilies had gone limp from the cold that had started to settle in. Old people sat on their porches with the dying rays of sunshine accentuating each wrinkled path of their faces with its false promise of warmth. They wrapped themselves in blankets and inhaled the frosted air in measured breaths, waiting for the nothingness to take over.

I called you from upstairs. I shouted. Furiously. Desperately. I called your name and battled the wind that snatched my words away.

‘’I rebuilt the fort!”

I stood at the top of the stairs and called and cried, holding out my hand as you battled your way up.

“Hurry! Grab my hand! Love is coming.”

It loomed behind you, a great cloud threatening to swallow us both. I held out my hand as far as I could, screaming your name as it reached up and tugged at your ankles. You climbed and I reached and we fought so desperately to run away from it.

And finally, we were safe. I had built a fort and we huddled inside, safe from love. We played cards and lit candles, we laughed and we lay together.

But we made no memories. We shared no songs which would someday pierce our very souls with their shrill falseness. We didn’t need to waste paper writing letters which we would later burn. We did not see sights and travel the world together. We did not tell all of our friends about each other and we had no need to someday explain to them that, no, he wasn’t ‘the one’. We did not buy gifts with which we would later pollute the ocean as we flung them into high tide, the waves crashing into our tears. We did not wear each other’s clothes, only to feel naked when they were taken back. We did not set alarm clocks that would remind us of each other every hour of every day after we parted.

We did not part. We stayed, safe from love and the eventual winter it would send to kill us. We stayed side by side, forever apart. And we never had to say goodbye.

we bully clouds now to pass the time away

We never forgot the day we found out that water is not blue. After years of believing we loved the colour of water, it turned out we loved nothing. After centuries of postcard- blue oceans, and the near-black lakes that lulled us into fits of poetry, and waterfalls that thawed us into being romantic, we found out they were lying. As we grew up we grew old and tired, hunched with the realisation that nothing was as beautiful as we thought.

Suddenly everything was a lie. People died, dog-heaven was a dusty dump behind an old windmill and horses never could fly. Our gunned-down heroes never came back to life, adultery wasn’t really a sin and ‘I do’ lasted only as long as it was convenient.

We stood, smoking outside the hospital. And I turned my back but never really walked away, even though we knew something had changed. Your eyes were black and blue and violet as you turned back to me. The tears, of course, were clear. Neither white nor blue, just a ghostly liquid spelling out whatmighthavebeens down your cheek.

I thought I should tell you, I slept with your best friend.

remember when i moved in you?

The words... the words escape me. And it’s like my very breath out of reach. It’s like my breath left with you, left me behind because it was no longer interested in moving through a shell.
It’s like my bones are dried up paintbrushes, trying desperately to move but leaving streaks of useless red all over the earth.
It’s like my thoughts have crumbled into ash. The memories are running away and all I want it to write a book but they are melting from my mouth like dirty water.
It’s like the songs are silent. The songs, once filled with you, are now silent with suffering.
It’s like I’m on drugs. I know something is happening, I know it’s bad and something tells me it might be the wrong choice, but right now it seems like the right one. But I don’t know exactly what is happening. The shapes shift so fast that my life is the hallucination of a rollercoaster.
Remember that night I hallucinated? That night I was alone, and I dreamed up reindeer and composers and big black birds turning into smoke as I gasped them into my lungs?
Remember that night we drove to nowhere and back, and said everything we needed to say?
Remember that night when we were all alone?
Remember all those next mornings?
The words... I cannot write them. And since you left I am simply writing a book about not writing.

i'm not okay, i promise

I never thought I would cry when I first saw you again.
But I did. Unashamedly and without knowing why, I told everyone what our silence was about.
And I cannot stand this deafening silence, nor the sight of you, tearing the tangled sinews and veins ridden with blood red grief right out of me.
I wanted to fall down on my knees and scream at you, and beg whoever was listening for an answer.
Down on my knees on the broken brick road that led me nowhere,
the yellow stains on my finger nails spoke of the bad decisions I blamed on you.
I didn’t even know if it was tears or rain, but my knees were weak with walking, even when you held my hand.

So here we stand, miles apart. But I can smell your breath on me all the time,
And the cigarettes all taste like you.
Here we stand, between one end and whatever happens next.
Here we stand, not knowing how to step forward, wanting to fall backwards and float away into nothingness.
But maybe I would rather feel pain than to feel nothing at all, because to me the opposite of love was never hate, but indifference.
I stood in the rain and watched you leave under that wholly unromantic half moon, and I remembered everything.
I am yellow. I am branded a coward in my own eyes.
A streetcar named me Liar.

you can only take what you can carry

To me, you were the rainy days I loved so much.

To me, you were the weather that mirrored my insides.

To me, you were ten seconds older than what had just gone wrong.

To me, you were mere minutes of laughter that hurt my cheeks for days to come.

To me, you were a butterfly pulse next to mine.

To me, you were crooked teeth and a dusty moonlit mile.

Whether I was mountains or clouds, to me you were the endless road leading there.

To me, you were not right, nor wrong.

To me, you are blue and red.

i don't remember you looking any better

The glass shards of my thoughts flitted across my mind’s sky like broken blackbirds. I was dreaming about that dream. That dream I could feel happening as you pushed me against a wall and forced my desires wide open.

And then I lay, writhing, in front of those double doors. I wrote you my best lines each night, and never once stopped listening to you, even when I was dying. I was dying of the pain of wanting to speak, to scream, to push my mouth over yours so you would just shut up.

And now, on this double-digit day that belongs only to you, I remain locked in our dream. I am dancing in the rain with my dreamer. There is a red dress, and there is music. And somewhere in all of the confusion there is a maybe.

full of broken thoughts i cannot repair

I sat in the shower, the tiles colder than the rest of me. I let the water run over me, pretending it was you. I made believe I was washed with your words, that it was your thoughts cascading down my body from my head, through my short hair you never liked much. I imagined the burning heat on my neck was the run of your hands I never liked to touch my shoulders or feet. I talked softly to myself, and convinced my mind it was you, reassuring me.

I sat there until the water became cold. It was, in fact, exactly like you. And the only thing that was only you was the small streams cutting through the fresh water, the rivulets that ran down my cheeks to drip onto my bare feet.

I’m too tired to explain. I don’t have the strength. Can we do it in the morning? I will beg.

my history's in a box, wrapped up in a pretty blue light.

Those were our days.

But these, these are our streets. The dizzying height of our memories makes my head spin, but at least the memories are still here.

These are our songs, the ones we sang to one another and the ones that made us write our stories more beautifully than before.

This is our work; you, visible in every inch of it. I didn't want you to go, but now I wish I could erase your presence that still lingers in very part of my existence.

I have to go now, or I'll be late for whatever is next.

But I am here.

it's like you smiled and shook my hand and said 'hey, I'm about to screw you over big time'

I meant when I said I love you. But in the moment I said I hate you, I meant it too.

I hate every single one of you who made promises, who made me feel safe and happy and secure. For making me feel better after crying, for making me feel dead after goodbye.

My fear is that, bit by bit, I give myself to people. And people always leave. But they leave with that piece in their pocket. And eventually, I will having nothing left. I will have nothing left to give to the person who deserves everything.

Do not wonder why I hate you. Do not wonder why I walk away when I see you, why I stop breathing when I think of you. I loved you, I love you, but it seems you've all thrown me away.

My tears always came more slowly than the words, the thoughts and the actions.

it feels so different this time 'round

This room. This empty room. These white walls. These bloody walls. This silent heart.
This heat. This frost. This inexplicable desire to say yes. This knowing. This confusion.

This beat. These footsteps. These silent sounds of a naked journey. These hands.
These songs. These melodies. These notes that make my heart bleed. This blood.

These memories. This nostalgia. This melancholy screaming at me.
This pen. These swords. This perpetual struggle stretching my skin.

This view. These bars.
This clock. Those words.

Only this.

Day 7

Today, the sun is out! For the first time everything is brillant and glorious. And we take advantage of it, sitting on the verandah that makes us feel oh so as though we are in Rhodesia, talking about clouds and other things that have nothing to do with anything.





Today, some of us will go back to the school. We will finish painting the dirty classrooms, we will print letters on the walls, we will plant seeds we came to sow. Today we will return one last time to receive our thanks.

Day 6

I am sitting in a van, listening to a song about home. A song about a morning star, about a town I know too well. A song that reminds me of you, of home.

We've been stopped, and I do not know what is going on.

'Where are you from?'

'Where are you going?'

'What are you doing there?'

'Why would you want to do that?'

So many questions I feel nobody can properly answer. And all the while I sit, forming my own questions and sending them away to be answered.

I am alright. Are you?

I am sitting, motionless and far away on the side of the road, rising with the relentless heat that clouds our brains and leaves us satisfied with the gaps in truths. What are you doing?

I am thinking of you. Do you think of me?

Day 5

We woke up early and packed simple lunches of sandwiches and water. It was still more than they had and I felt guilty that I had while others have not.

We painted. We dug. We laughed, flinging jokes and powder blue paint at one another.

Tomorrow we shall return for more.

Next week, I will return for more. All my life I will keep coming back for more, and hope someday I will feel it is enough. That I am enough.

I have been given a camera and without any pretentious ramblings of 'life behind the lense' I walk about taking pictures of everything. I capture pictures, not moments. I capture a lifetime in one shot of two children. Some smile, some do not. Not one of them is frowning, crying, shouting and beating fists against the chest of the world for being unfair. But somewhere in that neutrality is a look of serene acceptance, an awareness of what is and a hope, without dreaming too much, of what might be.

Back home, we talked. We discussed and debated but we never fought. Christianity, sanity, science. Organic living, literature, films, evolution. I find myself in a group of people who do not agree with me, but who can accept and love above all else.

After dinner, I showered and the water ran out halfway through. I planned to join the others, planned to read, planned to study. But I am exhausted. My eyes are closing and my mind is slowly shutting down for the night.

Tomorrow is another day.

I hope to be your 'what might be', and someday when we look back it will be what was. If we do it right it will be what will always be.

Day 4

I sit along with a boy and a girl. Everyone else is praying, but we three left the room because we think we know how to pray, but we haven't a clue where our prayers go, and so for now we pray to a different 'god'.

He is studying something which bores him. I do not have to presume, he says so himself. But he wants to use it to enable him to do what he wants to do, to help people. I hope he does.

Last night I went to the orphanage. We walked the moonlit mile down the road and met the 'orphans'. They are all boys. Not all of their parents have died, though they may as well have.

One is 7 years old. One is 19, and barely reaches my shoulders. He is still a boy, though he has not the time of youth ahead of him as we all did. One is dying. One is studying to become a doctor, and though he has been offered scholarships the world over he has returned home to visit his people. One is always smiling, another never does. One is finishing school, planning his future successes. One wants to make a difference someday, another just wants to look after his family back home.

And this one man is saving one child, who will grow to be the best surgeon in his country and remember that man who saved his life. And he will come back to his country, and save countless more lives. One man will change thousands of lives by starting with one.

One man is close to breaking point, but he is hanging on.

When we returned, I jumped into the pool. I dunked my head underwater and as my jeans clung to me, waterlogged and heavy, I screamed underwater to open up the faucet of my saturated mind. I let out the crowded thought in a stream of consciousness, finding comfort in the muffled sounds of my inability to understand.

And then there was you. You, whose accent I teased. You, the only person in whom I could bear it. You, in-your-face, and seemingly attacking but never with ill intent. You, with the strong-mindedness that clashed only because of my own. You with the opinions and the passions I love and share. You, who has so many stories to tell. You, the foreigner, who knew this place better than us all.

We are all friends in this place. We will hold hands and link arms and bend backs to help one another. We will carry together, we will cry about the load and laugh about our crying. We will wish there were more of us.

Last night, I slept.

Change, as it turns out, is good.

Day 3

I open up a crackling diary, with a burnt spine and stiff pages. I write a story that is still happening, and cannot help but wonder what is next. This has barely begun, I promise myself.

Today, we arrive at our destination. But it is but a place of rest in a journey I realise will take us centuries to complete.

We stay with a man and woman; they are married, with two sons. The house is a home, and has been for countless people that have already passed through it. The farm is enormous, but relatively small. The view has me fixated, the ground is useless. Forget about your alien crops, the only thing that still grows in this colony is the grass, the thorny trees that were here long before us. There is still room for them, because they never left.

The other farms are empty. They were claimed and left to die, like young boys who were never going to be any good on the battle field. A battle. A battle of power, and taking. Taking back what was, what was not, was is, what might never be again. Even the grass is threatening to retreat underground where there is no fight for just the next day.

We smoked and drank coffee for the first time in days. We played silly games under a thatched roof shielding us from the neverending rain. We told stories, and we listened to stories.

These orphans are not alone. They are the offspring of children who were too young, who made bad choices or who were the victims of others' ill desires, who are infected and dying, who have tried again and again to rush the process of death. They are the offspring of the dead, of the broken, of the incapable, desperate for capacity.

But they are the children of a man and a woman who will always raise them as their own. From here, they will go to school. They will take it more seriously than any of us did, and report to me daily with enthusiastic updates on their studies. They will live a sustainable life right here. They will be accountants for big firms, doctors who travel the world to study and return to their home to help their people. From here, they will grow.

This has barely begun, I promise you.

Day 2

Barely three hours' sleep in a strange place. There is hardly time for nightmares before alarms ring shrilly and one by one and bodies stir, accelerating as the sense of urgency dawns on us all.

We continue to drive as it continues to rain. Hours are spent lost in a place I thought I knew. I certainly found my way there, but I cannot seem to map my way out of this maze. It is a labyrinth of tall buildings breathing history with every day they stand, landmarks you pointed out as the best coffee in town and that place that burnt down. Everything I see is you, and though getting lost seems unnecessary I am glad for the presence of you and I in this strange darkness.

We leave the city and suddenly we find ourselves in the Eden of our land. The rain persists and everything is wet and green as though we never went near it. This marks the border between home and a foreign place, and we cross as though it is invisible.

It is an unexpected beauty. Though we knew not what to expect, nobody can prepare for this. It may simply be the dense clouds screening a struggling sun, but the light here is different. The landscape is breathtaking without being wholly alien to us, and as we gasp at the thick, moist greenness, the flatness interrupted by smooth bursts of rounded rock pushing out of the clay-like earth to bulge towards the moon like a pregnant womb, we are reminded of home. I, of you, as I envisage showing it all to you.

I cannot tell you that I am safe. But I am. There is nothing here- the towns are made up of toy houses and the streets were drawn by clumsy child fingers to allow play-play cars through. Everything is a little dirty. Someone has forgotten about this place and its people, forgot to clean the floors and give the walls a fresh coat of paint. Children stand around barefoot and still, mismatched and seemingly aimless.

There is no paint here.

It seemed a tedious day of not yet arriving, but no longer being at home.

Tomorrow is another, and we will indulge to let the daylight arrive before we do.

Day 1

I spent the night drifting in and out of dreamless sleep, reaching out and whispering things in your ear. Weeks later I discovered you had heard them, and I was glad. There are things you must hear, and I desired to leave you with these declarations as I left your side for weeks.

We, I and others but no you, left at four in the morning. The early hour, the being awake before there was even a hint of 'Yes, today will be another day' daylight- it was not new. Insomnia, and unconscious panic rendered this my most regular hour. And as the drunk students stumbled around in a ghost town celebrating something they have long forgotten, we snaked our way onto a long road to be more than that.

Nine others. Erratic sleep. Strangers who were fast becoming the opposite. Too few smoke breaks. A gradual build-up of stagnant body odour that nobody could smell because we all reeked of having sat still for too long, sleeping with our mouths open.

I watch this country of mine go by in an 80m/h landscape. First, endless flatness and galeforce winds. There is nothing, no mountain or ocean or any other landmark towards which the wind may be heading. It just travels, and somewhere over this desert nomansland it will stop suddenly, and drop to the dry earth as silently as it came. It raises no dust, and there are no trees to indicate its direction. It simply is.

Hours later I wake suddenly from a bad dream I hope nobody saw. I recognise this landscape. This is familiar, but I cannot say where I am. There are trees, and later crops. More wind, and dust. It lies above the ground, hovering about to make everything blurry and uncertain. Proportions and horizons can only be guessed, and the colours are not right.

I crawl down into the narrow aisle between the seats. My shoulders just fit, and I lie in the dark dreaming of another destination, forming the one I dream of silently in my thoughts. I am not sure where I am going, but someday you will be there too.

We arrive, and it is winter in November. As I stand outside in the rain, my hands stiffen at the unusual cold. With every breath my cigarette crackles softly and I think of you again. Tomorrow holds the unknown, but for tonight I will occupy myself with thoughts of you.

i'm on call to be there

I got in the car and drove. I could probably have walked, but I promised myself it was too dangerous in this town, this day and age. I turned the heater up, turned the music down and shivered in silence at the intersection as I waited for everything to grow slowly warm. The hot air seeped into my shoes and my sleeves like warm breath, comforting me with whispers of something we called 'future'.

I drove, and thought of you. I pretended I was driving to you.

Someday I will.

You, my beginning.

You, the one who will journey alongside me.

You, my end.

You, my future. My destination.

lipstick letters and souvenirs

I sit on a hill looking in all directions at everything that turns out to be nothing in particular. I have forgotten how to begin a letter formally, but I am sure you will forgive me.

I walked until I was sure I was lost. I walked to the place I always go when I’m lonely and want to be alone. I lit a cigarette, because I gave up smoking on Sundays.
I want to stay here until I get caught in the rain. But I shouldn’t wait for it to happen, so I think I'll find my way back now.

Sometimes you’ll stumble in the soft sand. Perhaps then it is better to walk on the hard ground. It is, after all, more stable.
I lie when I say I do not doubt. I fear, and I hesitate. I may not always inspect my landing before I jump, but I often look back and catch my breath thinking it a miracle I did not fall to my death.
So let’s not doubt. Let’s hold hands, and push our fears aside as we jump. If we fall, at least we’ll have another to hold onto.
Let’s pack our burdens together and walk to somewhere we have never been before. Let’s be scared together, until we are no longer scared at all.
Let’s find ourselves as we discover one another while get lost on our road to abandoning ‘I’ for ‘we’.