Your storm is an overly
destructive force, quite unsuitable
for my fragile disposition;
too many pieces of me
already went missing
during that last encounter.
Exposure to your intensity
is best kept at a minimum,
just to hold
my trembling heart at bay.
Had to build a new heart— again.
The old one, unreliable thing,
got itself broken in the wake of
some tragedy or other.
Seems that this one organ
is a bit of a weak link
in an otherwise reliable,
perfectly sensible organism.
It likes to forget its primary
function, namely to pump blood,
instead favours getting involved
in counterproductive romance.
Indecisiveness leads nowhere,
he says using the motivational
intonation, the one that is
usually reserved for team meetings.
He shows a lack of understanding
for the complexity of doorways.
It’s easy to be confident when you
never opened a portal to hell,
it sounds a bit snappish, his
leadership voice does that to her
sometimes. She lacks the words
to explain that behind the prettiest
doors may lurk unseen horrors,
and a lot of locks do not
necessarily safeguard something precious.
At some point you have to make
a decision, but this time you won’t be alone,
he promises. Not much of an
assurance really, when she is still not
certain, if the door that lead her
to him, might be one she should
have left unopened.
I lean into the stillness
of a city asleep.
I embrace the dense cloud cover
sealing in night-time illumination’s
surreal orange light;
banned from leaping up
into infinite space,
it raises a dome of seclusion,
cheating us into thinking
we are cut off from
the rest of the world.
I hum to the feeble tune
a single siren wails
in the distance,
and walk to the timing
of redundant traffic lights,
whose warning is lost on
the few resolute pigeons
reaping the harvest that
discarded food offers.
I carefully avoid stepping
on the interchangeable truths
neon lights write on dirty tarmac,
while cheering for the tiny ice rebels
in their quest of concealing
the concrete monsters
with a white veil
of fleeting beauty.
If you asked me
which you never do
(no surprise here)
I would show you
the truth about
the consequences
of one’s choices.
Not the happy place
of I-do-what-I-want,
but this particular field
where you reap
what you sowed,
and where you,
invariably, never show up.
I have to remove
a couple of
unfortunate strands
from the pattern of time.
I see now how
I got the weave all wrong,
creating a bit of chaos
I have to admit,
but I can fix this.
It is not tempting fate,
honestly, I am pretty good
at fixing things
like old furniture
and cracked china,
broken wings
and shattered hearts.
Adjusting time should not
be a problem at all,
I think.
Hopes, dreams, and wishes…
such overwrought creatures.
Little drama queens,
scattering grandiose ideas
like volcanoes spray ash.
Their exaggerated optimism
is quite annoying.
I have made it a habit
to misplace or
forget about them.
They never take kindly
to my pragmatic attitude,
rioting
in the back of my mind
with a vengeance.
My head rings with
their refusal
to be abandoned,
their insistence
I finally commit.
She holds on to possible futures
in crystal balls,
and hangs dream catchers
to trap demons.
She always heals her bruises
in bubble baths,
and her screams are muffled
by loud music.
She holds her heart together
with safety pins,
and covers her scars
with coloured band-aids.
She dims a mean, harsh reality
with candle light,
and wards off cruelness
with chocolate.
She never fights back
for fear of the costs,
the curse of being born
with a gentle soul.
november child 