This is not how I always imagined it to be. You and me, sitting in an empty car, in an empty town, waiting for the gas to fill up the empty tank in our empty lives. We turn onto the open highway and run into a rare instance of Saturday night dinner traffic, so we roll the windows down and let the cool evening air wash over us, watching as the sunset turns the sky dusty pink, luring Venus out from the horizon. It's a slow crawl on the interloop, but that is okay because it is May and little else matters at this point. In fact, at this very moment, I could even say I was content; content with staring at the blue sky all my life, sitting on books, and pressing flowers until they are dry. It's just so easy to keep doing the same thing over and over again.

So when we finally finally reach that goddamned fork in the road, I say "Don't" like I always have. Because I know better than anyone else, even you with your half-mocking lopsided smile, that if we take the wrong fork, we would never come back. We would keep driving until we see the Northern lights in the distance, until we reach the Arctic circle and hear the soft crunch of permafrost underneath our feet, until we finally drown in all the overwhelming beauty of freedom. It wouldn't be a bad way to die, I sometimes think.

Dying Gracefully

Sometimes I wonder where I would be if it wasn’t for you. Probably still wandering across open highways, dreaming in the window-seat, getting lost everywhere, except in reality. Do you remember when we first met? Underneath the swing set in the warm summer evening, or maybe, at the bookstore that burned down a few months ago. I hope it was at the bookstore. Though, I suppose it doesn’t really matter anymore. 

 I cut my hair before I left and kept the locks in your library drawer. It’s not a promise per se, but it’s not a not-promise either. Sentiment, at best. I imagine that when we meet again, it’ll have grown out once more. And perhaps, next time, we can meet on even ground as strangers instead of heart-broken fools. For it was you who reached for me first and I would like to think that one day, I could be the one to reach for you. For you have always been to me, a tempestuous, fleeting thing, like a cold spring rain; and like petals, I find myself caught up in the whirlwind, scattering in a most beautiful kind of death. 

Please take this cup, and let me fill it up with sake. 

Even a beautiful flower, loses its petals due to the storm. 

Life is only a "goodbye".

The Defect Of Memory

You returned to the flat in spring, when the pussy willows began to poke their furry heads through the gloom of winter. And at first, it was as if nothing had changed. As if from the moment you stepped out your door, the clock stopped inside room 221 and only restarted when you stepped over the unspoken threshold. But then you begin to notice things, small things at first. Like how the record player crackles and slips past measures of Scheherazade or how the roof of the bathroom leaks when it rains too hard. The neighbors don’t say hi as often as before and Mr. H, the baker downstairs, died last year and there is no longer the smell of yeasty bread every Sunday morning. It’s not too hard to shrug it off and keep moving.

So you tell yourself that it doesn’t matter that the light doesn’t fall through the curtains in the same way as it did before and that it is okay for the church bells to be tuned slightly sharp. Everything is just fine until the sound of shattering porcelain wakes you up once again. It’s the tenth mug you’ve broken in two weeks and you begin to see a pattern emerging. There is tea mixed with blood on the floor as you pick up the broken pieces with trembling fingers and wonder if it will ever be the same again.

Prints Giveaway: CLOSED

Strange stuff indeed. I've recently reached 100 followers, which is quite a feat given how bad I usually am about updating this blog. This year though I've been pretty strict with myself and have been trying to have new content at least once a week (hopefully it is working). It's going to be an exciting year I think - lots of traveling and new adventures and moving around, so I do hope you will all continue to stay with me on this journey (despite my awful/liberal use of punctuation and of misplaced conjunctions and run on sentences and parentheses - sticklers for these things have my sincere apologies). To my dear followers: thank you for all your encouraging comments, they seriously fuel me for the whole week.

When I start apologizing for one thing I start thinking of other things to be sorry about. For example, my writing seems to be getting more obscure, grim, and bizarre. IRL friends who read my blog worry about my mental health hahhahah, but everything is quite okay, not fantastic, but good enough that it is okay. We all have our bouts of melancholy and when that happens I tend to just write until it all goes away. And most of my little stories are only thinly based on reality and yes it might all be in my head, but as Dumbledore says "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"


Winners are Blue Eyed Owl, Little Henry Lee, and Felicity! I'll contact you all soon!

Suburban Horror Story

This week we got another one of those "have you seen me?" postcards printed on cheap blue cardstock. We used to collect them and stick them on the refrigerator in order of date. Those who had been missing the longest were on the bottom, while the most recent ones were stuck at the top. We used to call them the lost kids and pretend they were the ones who were finally able to escape this suburban monotony and make it to Neverland. We knew better though. "You know they are never coming back right?" she used to say with her eyes, big and solemn, "make sure you don't end up as one of them." 

June passes into July. The fridge gets so crowded we have to move some of the older kids to make room for more. We put away the 5-year-old brunette who disappeared from the car lot of the local grocery store in 1981 with a heavy heart. But it wasn't until August, a particularly hellish August, when she finally disappeared from the playground where all the neighborhood kids liked to hang. Then the police came with their sniffer dogs and uniformed men with their mouths set in a grim line. And even before Mummy came home to tell me the bad news, I already knew what had happened. It was only a matter of time before her face ended up on the fridge. I've gotten used to seeing her every morning as I reach for the orange juice - I don't think I could ever forget that face.