letter in an envelope (second draft)

Dear prescription medicine only,

darling.

I tread our distance like a paper ghost – dancing silhouettes on a pavement underneath – finding
Salvation in someone else’s back pocket
I shiver in their touch;
As they held me, all
I could see was you.

I took a massive leap of faith – over stranger land – and
Held my breath as my stomach curled up
Into a sailor’s knot – of dread
of folding anticipation
of tangling fingers

of hope. and crossing all my toes. pass me around between lovers’ fingers, stranger after stranger

because

I need so desperately to re-trace you, for another hit, like an afterthought
I’m here. hoping you won’t interpret my intrusion as inconvenient

In your life.

This is what I’ve resolved to do after countless second-thoughts and frantic panics to the post-master

To retrieve this letter. please don’t tell me I have fallen off your mind like
You are permanently on mine, please

Love,
me. Once more

instead -

To: sender (this resident has now moved).

which shade would you be?

 

If colours were personalities, which shade would you be ? Bright blue or a dashing red, ravel in green or cannery yellow, or perhaps a drop from every tin?

If I could pick a colour I’d be rainbow coloured swirls on your favourite shirt. Your chain-smoking-organic-eating and smelling-of-soap fruitarian. I’d want to be the heart of your jokes. And take a drag from your nicotine & tar so that your only deadly poison would be me. 

I’d be the bare-feet-dancing, pebble-skipping, hot-coal-hopping, to-the-rhythm-of- keys jingling in my pocket type of colour. 

And my friends, because yeah I would have friends, would be the cross-leg-sitting & story-sharing-while-we-laugh-at-mundanities & discuss patterns  & snippets & fall into enigmas with our-heads-swirling-but-smiles-painted-in-satisfaction kind of colours. 

We’d steal candy from lolly-jars & play tunes at 3-am in the morning living in redundancies & measure success by angry neighbour knocks & then laugh all about it afterwards. We’d turn the lights on & dance in nothing but music & open shades & 7 wide glass panels kind of frolic & fall into a heap on the floor; that kind of colour of exhaustion. Red & blue & flushed.  

And my colour would match your colour (im)perfectly from across the hall & hall & hall in the next building adjacent to mine & we’d dance together to arms out legs synchronised steps following or leading in alternatives but sort-of apart rhythms, alone in our separate bedrooms. 

I’d be the colour of rain & the fragrance of blue & the sky would be a shade of orange & we’d watch the sunrise & have arms entangled in an embrace & feel heat in rhythmic oscillations & smile at the warmth (grin and teeth and all) of it all. And we’d tumble into bed afterwards, together. In different hemispheres. Next to different significant others.

And I’d fall into sleep without ever knowing your name or you for that matter, but we’d be bright colours in the sky & in unison, that type of shade. 

if walls could talk

 

The clock strikes forty-five .. forty-six past 8. 

Shades closed. Curtains drawn. Windows locked. 

You bombard the door like a force of nature

On a mission

To shrug yourself off after-work stress 

And change into behind-the-door calm and how-did-I-end-here sobs 

Of the shoulder. Because tears just don’t cut it anymore. 

Keys. Wallet. Papers. Heaped on the table at awkward angles. Not a slight glance passed. 

Coat flung somewhere, out there, out of mind. 

You topple to the table, the one whose corner you snub constantly

With your toe, after midnight

You keep your head blank. At least until you feel that burning liquid soothe down your throat. You like the slither. It mouths to you comfort. 

You take out a hypothetical laser and pinpoint every significant moment passed thus far. 

But so far you come up with a list of insignificants. 

The alcohol is taking effect. Flashes of one-day fall within reach. 

You smell the mahogany and exhale (perfect ringed cigar smoke, Cuban packaged)

You’re intoxicated. And it pulls you over onto an over-stuffed couch out-of-place with your apartment, where you ruminate over figures, remarks, words inflicted (on you) throughout the day. After-the-facts that you cannot change. Too honest. You reach for another glass. 

With a metaphorical spoon you excavate under the skin, flakes of mistakes cascade onto oak vanished floorboards underneath. Recently polished. Before you wash away the day’s stench. Daily exsanguinations that keep you sane because walls cannot talk …