There I sit
in the tranquil bath of
efflorescence
All whilst the surroundings
keep bashing the pulse
of ambulance sirens,
children screaming
from a nearby school yard,
dogs beating their tails
like little whisks
in a batter full of
freshly cut grass

Keeping my eyes closed
I envision someone
passing me by,
perhaps in the company of a small dog
running up to me,
clumsily with its tiny paws
making harmless scratches
on my bare knees,
and me exchanging a few words
with its owner
Maybe I make a comment
about the weather
that appraises
the shifting of seasons

Oh,
(“I could never really tell if that girl Cheryl was a flake or a flirt”)
the cherry blossoms
and their ephemeral life
that envelope me in their fragrance

I remember the line
in some old house track,
that lonesome statement repeating itself
like a broken record,
trying to create a mantra
that dissolves in the listener's
consciousness
as smoothly as honey
dissolves in hot water

Flake?
Flirt?
I bet Cheryl just wasn’t that into you
I bet she was busy
exploring life amidst the brief
blossoming period
of a month a year
My routine is dear to me,
shoot me!
I’ve come to rely on routines
In the absence of external
and seasonal change

At first the adherence to routine
prompted a sense of memory loss,
as I’ve taught my memories
to accompany the patterns
of seasonal and cyclical
metamorphosis
then I found a mnemonic routine

As I like doing from time to time,
I went to see my neighbor yesterday,
one of few left in our street
She invited me to relax on her sofa,
with her cat
playing with the paper wraps
from an old hamburger,
and asked if I’d eaten
as I looked boney
gazing at my body
as trying to pierce through all my layers
I’d twined myself with

My neighbor’s apartment was right above
the former McDonald’s shop
and as desperation does to people,
she’d recently abandoned her
nutritional ideologies
for frozen burgers
from her former in-house butcher

She said she was tired,
couldn’t make plans ahead any longer
and no crops
would grow at this temperature
Even the greenhouse
that she had built
was too cold
and the glass was starting to break
Regulated temperature is fine,
when you know things on the outside are shifting,
but I can’t find myself breaking from my lethargy,
she said and asked me a third time
if I was sure I didn’t want something

After we’d shared a strong drink
we said goodbye,
embracing one another
She asked if I was sure
I didn’t want to spend the night?
Despite my yearn for another body
I returned home to fall asleep
at my regular hour
Knowing that I’d need to be somewhere
within the hour
It’s been cold
for what feels like
four entire seasons

All the cycles I used to know
have now been replaced
by an idle continuation
Like when you accidentally bite into
a too large chunk of bok choy
and become aware
of the limiting space
within the architecture of your mouth
As you refurnish
and chew through it
the texture slowly dissolves,
and each bite dims the different flavor
and texture between the leafy blades
and the bulbous bottoms

It’s easy to forget
how something used to feel
in its animated form
when it's vitality is shredded
into dull permanence
She
who calls herself
the technologist
found me
in a time
where I’d started to reflect
on the chaos
that had prevailed in my life
up until the cold settled
I became her collaborator
to a project
of which scale I had little
understanding of

Who knew
turbulence could take root
in this frosty soil?
When I was a child
my mother lived
just by the edge of our country
After the edge there was water,
and on very clear days,
a silhouette of something
past the horizon
could be seen

We gave it cryptic names
Turned it into a kingdom
of dysfunctional
royal family members

In our shared fabrications
the royal family were fantastical,
crooked beings, they wore
rag-like clothes,
really ill-fitting cycling shorts
and moth-eaten t-shirts
Their make-up couldn’t stick
to their face
so an eye shadow would easily
become a tear

North of our house
were ice sheets
that formed their own
sovereignty
Was it all just a
sophisticated déjà vu?
The things she had seen before
was perhaps just a
confused hippocampus?

It’s not that I roll back my eyes
and let her demon possess me
Our deal is that I
create new stories
and narratives
from fragments of her life
She holds the seeds in her hand
and I tell her
where to disperse them

I am her ghostwriter
But she is the real ghost
Our roles really confuse me sometimes

When things get to my head
I like to chew eucalyptus gum
and light some incense
that smells like a herbalist
got abducted by a team
of researchers from Primark
to formulate
a scent for their
loungewear section
It’s not very far off
I actually got my incense
from the TK Maxx-store
opposite my flat
It was just there,
in the abandoned mess
on the floor,
a few months back,
when our pipes had started to freeze

Today I light the incense
and I tell myself;
I need to set my own boundaries
I make time for her
similar to my therapist
making time for me
in their calendar
With patience,
understanding
and a firm border,
and not with bewildered compassion

When I once ask her about all of this
composition of self,
she tells me this:

<3 - 2023-12-29 13:36:28 - <3<333333

adolphus50@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:37 -

- 2022-10-06 00:56:37 -

adolphus50@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:35 -

joan14 - 2022-10-06 00:56:35 -

Developer - 2022-10-06 00:56:33 -

Developer - 2022-10-06 00:56:25 -

shannon_boyer@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:09 -

- 2022-10-06 00:56:08 -

shannon_boyer@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:06 -

joan14 - 2022-10-06 00:56:05 -

shannon_boyer@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:03 -

joan14 - 2022-10-06 00:55:57 -

118 Yundt Burg - 2022-10-06 00:51:14 -

- 2022-10-06 00:51:14 -

118 Yundt Burg - 2022-10-06 00:51:13 -

Suite 574 - 2022-10-06 00:51:12 -

118 Yundt Burg - 2022-10-06 00:51:11 -

Suite 574 - 2022-10-06 00:51:03 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:45 -

- 2022-10-06 00:50:44 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:43 -

nico.franecki@bdcimail.com - 2022-10-06 00:50:42 -

nico.franecki@bdcimail.com - 2022-10-06 00:50:40 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:38 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:21 -

- 2022-10-06 00:50:19 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:17 -

baylee_harris@bdcimail.com - 2022-10-06 00:50:15 -

baylee_harris@bdcimail.com - 2022-10-06 00:50:13 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:08 -

E - 2022-04-11 00:22:06 - so beautiful

- 2022-04-11 00:21:49 -

- 2022-04-11 00:20:38 -

*_* - 2022-03-31 12:01:05 - I love it!!