Life Itself

Sometimes I see her and pain and wonder where it comes from. She refuses to shine, she rejects any sense of warmth that comes her way, she has a tower erected all around her. My gut tells me to look in his direction. To see the invisible scars he left on her and dig deeper to unearth the visible ones. I want to ask her the right questions, and give her enough courage to tell me their answers. I want to release her from the suffocation that she's suffering in alone. I want to take on all that he's ruined her with, and I want to send it lashing right back at him. I know what he did to her, I know it better than any truth she could accurately remember. I can sense it in such a real way, that her anguish is now mine. I am afraid she'll never break the silence, that she will be misunderstood for far too long a time, that once again, his demons will have their way. Each time, I helplessly look in her direction, almost asking, almost telling. And then I shamefully look away, n...

I often wonder about the times before communication methods were so abundantly available. Reading Kafka's Letters to Milena makes me almost long that I was born during that time. There is a certain romanticism in waiting. In knowing that your time together is extremely precious, limited, fleeting. In sending your emotions to someone with no confirmation of receipt. I can only try and imagine what the lack of certainty created - a constant need, a permanently unfulfilled desire, release only in small doses. There is something poetic about reading what someone wrote many days ago, imagining where they were sitting, what they were wearing, how they smelt, as they wrote those words to you. A sense of nostalgia and realism, wrapped together carefully. There is also so much deliberation and intense emotion that goes into the act that it restricts the number of people one can share that emotion with, ensuring that when you do, the understanding is as deep as it gets. It takes t...

If you could hear the last need as it echoes endlessly from me to you, Would you hear the stifled childhood scream as it penetrates you? Would my words have the honest intensity of my feelings? Would the emotion come tearing through, unbridled, undeterred, unfettered? If there was no fear of fall-outs, of hurt, of betrayal, of vacuum, Would my expression lash out angrily as you string the sentences together? Would the insane promise of comprehension last across ages and irrationality? Would the words quietly reach you, and land on earnest understanding? If ink could carry all the guilt, the nonchalance, the nothingness of us, Would it tell you, how the empty hollow left inside of you has crushed me? Would it show you my crevices, and their jagged, insistent, desperate stories? Would it smudge the distance between rotten you and rotten me? A question, and the hope for its answer, is all that’s left of you and me. ...

It's the in between In what is never said between us. What does it take to put it out there? To have it said, loudly. Do you think about the same things? Do you wonder with the same intensity? When I am listening, While I giggle, While I chatter endlessly, Do you perceive the subtle pause? Do you hear the sudden catch in my breath? Do you catch the sudden sparkle? Are you simple, like your words, Like your straightforward stories, Like your child like reluctance, Are you more?