I sit with a feeling that’s become so strange to me I don’t understand it. I don’t know if it’s here to make a home of my heart or if it’s just passing me by like a moment I cannot hold onto. I thought that I had pulled the connection wires on love long ago. Thought nobody could offer me the love that was necessary. But everything I know about love—everything I know altogether—is challenged when you speak to me so sweetly. Where did you come from? What did you come here searching for? Words become so futile in your presence. I find myself dreaming of the ways we could be together. Please, please, please don’t feed me more dreams of things that may not even be. Because dreaming costs too much to be in vain.
Mulitdicipinary Writer
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To: You Who Never Arrived*
I almost met you at the grocery store around the corner except you left as I entered it. I almost met you at the bus stop except you were entering another vehicle while mine was pulling to a complete halt. My shoulder almost brushed yours for the first time in a crowd yesterday. You would’ve called my name if you knew it. I would’ve recognized your voice if I heard it. Our almosts torment me day in and day out of this world I wonder without you. Sometimes I wonder if your days are the same. Everything begins and ends with you. Every dream I have, every wild thought, every moment I want to share with you. You, who never arrived, how much longer must I wait?*You Who Never Arrived is a title of a poem by Rilke and is borrowed for this context
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“Write about what you know and what you care about. Do it for the people you care about, the people you want to touch with your writing.”
Raymond CarverI was having a conversation with a friend of mine recently when you walked into the bar. I don’t know if she noticed me waving at you. I know I could’ve left my seat and greeted you instead. But it was something she said. She was telling me about her last romance. How when it ended she would’ve done anything to get it back. She would’ve done anything at all to be with the person she was leaving. What stopped her was, the conversation they had afterwards. After two years of no contact—no calls, no messages, no emails, no being around anybody that may have even coincidentally seen the other—they sat down over a drink to talk about things they don’t talk about with anybody else. That conversation helped them understand that this wasn’t what they really wanted. That had they continued to be together, they would’ve been around different people than they know now, experienced different things than they do now, etc which would have prompted them to be different people than the people they are now. I guess that’s what stopped me from leaving my seat to talk to you. That you were with different people, having different conversations, different experences, and that I may not have liked that. I may not have liked the person you are now. I may have not liked the person I would have become while you became that person.
Anyway, we talked and talked and talked.
I mentioned I’d go home and write about it.I’m writing this for you, and for me. I’m writing you a reminder that wherever you are now, it’s exactly where you need to be. That it’s important to be in this moment. That it’s important to remember how you got here, but just as important to not live in the rear-view of things. Otherwise, you won’t see what’s coming… and it may just be the most important season of your life.
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When you sat down beside me at the coffee house,
Before I said hello I said,
“Can you believe this box of cookies is
labeled ‘Glucose’ and people buy it off the shelves?”
“I mean, it literally says SUGAR.”
What I meant to say is, if you had a label
It would say sugar, too, and I would take you
Off every shelf in every store in the city
Because, baby, you are now off the market.
What I mean to say is,
They should never put a price
On something so sweet.
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I think you’re where words come from. I think you’re where people go to for quiet. I think I mean like the beds or hearts they sleep in. I think I mean like the shower boxes or baths they get in for some heat. I mean you’re hot like the sun after a break-up. I mean don’t ever break up with me. I mean I want to be with you like you want mangoes and I hope this goes somewhere. I mean you make my heart run and it’s been out of breath since the first time it saw you at a bar in our hometown. I mean I just had to get a taste when we were on that rooftop and you were singing sweet things to me. I mean you make me want to sing and spend my international minutes on calls to tell you that. I mean I want to tell you you make my heart open like fields of sunflowers. I mean I’ll always shift towards your light. I mean you make me love love. I mean you make me want to get on one knee and ask you to be my partner. I mean I just want you to remember what this feels like so you’d tell our daughter what love is. That’s what you are. Everything good. I mean, I love you.
Dali 