Shining flashing gems
Catch me, hold me, keep me still
Rooted by your eyes
August 2006 Archives
The cars are rushing at me, but I can't move.
"I love someone!" I shouted.
A woman looked up, startled, as her husband swerved around me.
My hair is wild; my hands have been through it so many times they are greasy.
I can feel my heart in my chest, the leaden thump, the sick sideways lurch that pretends to be a heartbeat.
"I love someone!"
I can hear it echoing off the stone and glass of the office blocks and Georgian tenements of Queen Street.
A light flickers on across the street and a girl in just a bra pokes her head through her curtains to glare at me.
"I love someone!"
It's so loud my head rushes like the Raukawa Falls and reminds me of the last time I felt this pain.
The steed of this Valley is Pain...
My knees are on the pavement now, chewed gum and cigarette butts and chip wrappers from Festival revellers.
My eyes are deserts. They have nothing left to cry.
The girl in the window hears me, she looks sad, then down, then away, biting her lip, the curtain closing.
A lover is he who is chill in hell fire. A knower is he who is dry in the sea.
"I love someone!"
I'm looking at the stars now. There are millions of them, the scattered ashes of my cremated heart. I try to clutch at them; I want to cling to life.
"Please..." I whisper. "Please..."
"I love someone." It's barely a whisper now, and I know I have to go to bed, the bed, our bed, my bed, my half-bed, love's coffin, the quilt a shroud, tear-made salt stain rings. I have to wash this before I give it back. I think.
Cake is playing in my head. "She'll come back to me. She'll come back to me. All day, I wait and wait to hear her footsteps on my walkway. She never came. She never even called."
I'm so full of love I'm choking on it, swollen with it, ready to burst with it.
"Please..." Comes out again. I don't know what I'm even pleading. Who knew?
I'm inside now. I don't know how I managed the key. The trash needs to go out. It's Thursday. It's stacked at the bottom of the steps. I'm carrying the bags outside. My upstairs neighbor's bags are heavy.
Quiet, quiet; my sister is sleeping, her husband beside her, in the spare room.
"I love someone." I whisper to the dark living room, but the sofa knows, the chair knows, the floor knows. The fireplace knows, nodding in somber sympathy.
