they say
is a wonder.
but a disappointing wonder.
of dog shit and expensive shit.
do you still want to go? with me. To Paris
at 15 euros for two coffees.
your upside down Louvre,
with that curved Monalisa smirk,
and your silence during my silence.
is Paris.
and free coffees
in the office.
mixed in with your secret spices.
is a wonder.
I am the one who waits for you.
I am in between remembering that dream and waking.
I wait for you there.
and wait for you, still.
seconds before you eyes close.
A sudden pang of longing hit me, of riding the metro at night, singing along with Brandon Flowers while fighting the current existential angst. Then I find myself moving along with the crowd having a separate sense of urgency.
I walk slowly towards inevitability, the curbside lined with thoughts of jumping off the ledge of this certainty.
The longing passes, except for the ache. Mr. Flowers sang that dreams aren't what they used to be. It's now dark again. I'm there. I'm always there in the end.
If the answer is no, can I change your mind?
there's this pain inside.
it slips in and out of time.
displaced, dislocated.
and settles in the same pressure points.
load-bearing posts.
and everything blurs
in the dust of the
post-collapse.
it also gets harder to breathe.
I am afraid of the coming calm.
effortless pain.
it is suddenly there,
unwanted and unwelcome. honest and brutal.
no blood but flayed still.
timeless, ageless
but perhaps for the unfeeling.
the wretched.
the resigned.
and the compliant.
the pain is a companion,
a balance for the abyss. that still beckons
not to stare, but
to leap.
for the faithless.
the guiltless.
but pain is a tether.
and stays.
the abyss can only wait,
like the endless night that it is.
