1 054. Tower

I woke up with my cheek on a stone floor. The rain had already washed away the thin layer of snow that fell the day before. We had been waiting for over a month for that first snowfall and it was already gone with one quick flush. It fell so gently, so slowly, so hesitantly. As if afraid of being rejected. I had plans to take a long walk watching it lay to rest on top of fields and treetops. Once I stepped out the door however, I realized I wouldn’t get far at all. I just stood there overwhelmed by the serenity of the scenery. As I got to the end of the picturesque little street, I was already done for.

For as long as I could withstand the cold I stood there and let the snow fall on me as it did on the rooftops around me. In the lamplight it was even prettier. All those sounds you can hear only when you listen carefully, slowly sidled out of the grey mass of noise like shy little animals. You just have to stay still and patiently wait. I opened my mouth and stretched out my tongue.

The light fog that hovered over the cold stones tasted just like the snow that fell that night. I wondered how many days it had been. I had promised myself I wouldn’t leave until I found a good reason not to stay.

I cant say why that tower had captured me. Something had happed when I ran my fingers across the surface of the outside wall. Once they hit wood it was over. I knew I couldn’t just walk away. So I opened the door and stepped in. When I got back home I was 5 kilos lighter and nobody had missed me. This was the life I lived then. This was the life I lived after last time we met.

Now that it was over, I wasn’t completely sure what to do with myself. So I naturally started a new half-insane project. I worked furiously and slept feverishly. Few short intervals, intense and mind-numbing dreams, I woke up when I couldn’t take anymore. Life seemed less stressful and far less upsetting than the dreamworld. I rejected you and made a point out of pushing any thought of you I had, far away with both arms. I pulled myself backwards and could eventually break free. But I would fall into the dreamworld and there every thought I had pushed away, was waiting for me. “Hello” they said “How are we doing?”

The answer was pretty obvious. “Splendid” I smiled. “How about a cup of tea” and we would sit down, just like before, and have a nice long conversation where I would say silly things and you nodded with a serious look on your face, bored out of your wits, inserting standard replies representing long since cemented point of views. At least that’s how it worked in my dreams.

You called me the other day. Was it yesterday? You had me thrown in another one of your curious little time twists by saying “I’ll call you later”

24 hours after I’m still doing the maths of differences in zones and perceptions and rhythms of time. Also, it could be a cultural thing, I argued. Nothing seemed to quite fit and the debate went on long into the small quiet lonely hours. I didn’t rest. Food didn’t taste good. Music was sounds. Talking was strange and forced and staged. Who am I playing again?  I had to dig deep in the books for this one.

31 053. Keeping a Secret

Everything is fire.

I burned, I burned, I burned under the thick layer covering me. I burned. It would swallow me and leave my bones. Only my bones. Next time you see me, I wont be there anymore. I will bring with me the three minutes of fire it took to eradicate all life inside of me. I will show you how my landscape got covered in thick burning lava. I will show you how it happened. How my soul got buried alive. I will come to you 10 nights and I will leave little pieces of my heart with you in your dreams. You can hold them if you like, but it wont comfort them. Its too late for that. You should have held me. No matter, never mind that.

When we meet I will have my cloud of ash with me. There I will hide and there will the bones of my soul rest.

If I sing of love again, it will be an echo a wind carried from the past.

I don’t know if its true that I loved you. I cant say that for sure. What I have now, the second past me and the second future me and this second me, we are close to identical. We are stone. Scattered bones in a cloud of ash. Everything is so dark here. But darkness is all we know. When the winds blow of the past, my eyes get covered with ash and I cant see. My ears get filled with ash and I cant hear. My mouth get covered with ash and my lips will never kiss you again. 

 I just wanted to make a joke that’s all. I hadn’t intended anything specific with it. It wasn’t a ‘move’ or a ‘play’. It was just me being a dumbass that’s all. Nothing to worry about. I didn’t intend to start a war with her. I didn’t want to steal his attention away from her. Whatever the fuck was going on here, I didn’t want any part of it. Not only did I regret it because it gave her a perfect opportunity to insult me with silence. I regretted how it might have made me seem like a desperate attention seeker. Now I all I wanted to do was to reject that image in all the ways that I could. I stopped glancing his way, just because I feared that I would have her eyes on me. I’m not gonna get in the middle of some romance drama or what they are up to. She certainly seemed interested in him. So when he spoke to me, I got scared. I got scared that it would increase her hostility against me. And I was right. 

But before it got to that he said “Do you like dinosaurs?” 

30 052. Deep in Thought

Everything is fire.

I looked at him as he was deep in thought. He didn’t see me. I had been observing him for some time. His nose, his chin and above all his eyes. He seemed troubled. He had looked my way a couple of times, but I felt like he had been looking through me. I wanted so desperately to come closer to him. I started to dream and the landscapes that floated by in my mind all got mixed up. That short time we had been sitting there I had already built myself full with dreams. I wondered what it would be like talking to him. I got up and went over to him, I sat down next to him and asked him about his coffee or about his drawing or said something stupid like hey, relax I’m not gonna ask you to draw me as a mermaid. But of course as I blushed with intense fire just thinking about it, I didn’t do any of that. I just sat there and admired him from a distance, it was pretty short. Way to short for me to feel comfortable staring at him. I had sat down on a small table close to a booth. It was the only table available that was a two seated one. I didn’t want to take up too much space. Notably annoyed he had sat down at the boot. He spread his things and books out on the table. He didn’t seem to worry at all about taking up too much space. He ordered a coffee and only that. Black he said and the waitress seemed to know this already. They exchanged a couple of friendly lines and she smiled. She touched her hair, twinned it and asked him a couple of stupid things like can you draw me as a mermaid.

“You don’t know what it s like to be me” she thinned her eyes and looked at me intently. Every night for the past week she had come to me in my dreams. Every night it was the same. She took me by the hand, led me to the garden. We walked and I grew increasingly dizzier from her touch. Finally everything but the back of her hand was a complete blur. Then she let go and I stood there for some time, swaying back and forth. When I finally touched the ground again and my soul had been returned to me, I looked at her. She smiled that smile, “3 minutes” she said “Don’t let go of me with your eyes, keep them right here” she said and nailed me down with her eyes. I got dizzy again. Surroundings blurring out and she sucked me in to that horrible scene again where she got drowned by lava, she was buried and burned alive. After the three minutes had passed she let go of me and again I was swaying. When I got a hold of myself she was still smiling. She reached into her chest, between the ribs and pulled out the black pulsating ball. That’s when I realize that we are standing on a hill. The moor stretching out around us. For every time we returned the ground seemed to be increasingly pulsating, as if every black ball she pulled out had gotten buried there in those barren lands. She left the ball by my feet and turned away slowly. That’s when I stopped her this time. I grabbed her sleeve lightly between my thumb and index finger. The last thing I wanted to do was to touch her when I wasn’t supposed to. She disliked being touched. She aggressively disliked it. I never got an explanation to why. I wasn’t sure that she knew. She kept repeating it, ‘I don’t like being touched’. She said it smiling or pulled back, she said it jokingly or with a slight agitated tremble on her voice, as if she was ready to bite your hand of if she had to. “Do you even know, anything about me at all” “I know you don’t like to be touched” “Then please get your hand off me” “Alright, I’m sorry, but please stay, talk to me will you? Tell me what’s going on. Why wont you take my calls, why wont you just… I want you to come back” “It doesn’t matter, nothing matters anymore, don’t you understand?” “No, no I really don’t, that’s why I want you to talk to me” “Do you even care about my feelings? You say you want me around, but did you ever consider what it does to me?” “Of course I care, what are you even talking about? What do you mean what it ‘does’ to you. Have I done something wrong. Im not sure what I did, but if I did something I’m sorry. Wont you tell me?” “Let…. Go… of me” I hesitated, opened my mouth but closed it again. There was something in her tone. If I didn’t let go of her sleeve, I risked having my hand cut off. So I sighed and let go. My arm fell helplessly down to my side. Alright I thought. Ok then. She walked away. And same as always I stood there watching her figure disappear and reappear as the hills rolled. When she was gone I sat down and looked at the little black pulsating ball. It slowly lost its vitality and the vibrations calmed. Like waves evening out after a storm. I sat there until it was completely still and the threads shooting out of it wrapped themselves tightly around the surface. It grew cold, hard and, even tho it seemed impossible, even darker. I reached out and lifted it up. It was too heavy for me to lift with one hand only. I put it in my lap and looked at it, just looked at it for some time. I eventually fell asleep with it in my lap. In my dream I closed my eyes and imagined you walking back. Walking slowly back over the hills. Before you reached me I would have fallen asleep, and I would be dreaming in my dream. Then while I was sleeping there, on that hill with nothing but the moor of barren land around me, you would reach me. You would sit down by my sleeping dream body. For some reason I would have my hair grown out. Perhaps because I knew you liked it that way. You put your hand on my forehead, as to check if I had a fever, then you would run your fingers through my hair.

29 051. Sport

"You dont know, what its like
to be me"

28 050. Breaking the Rules

They tried to catch me with friendly invites. Make me theirs. I had left the loving distant arms of my god, I had lost my religion. But I didn’t turn into the seeker they would expect. I wasn’t lost. I was losing, but I wasn’t lost. Without a mother, without a spring to cling to, thirsty but not sipping for drops. I wanted to become my own well. And nothing would fill it like you could. So I politely rejected the offers. They couldn’t possibly know how deeply it craved, how wholly it would have to be cemented. Their affection would simply slip through the cracks and again fill the surroundings to feed a flower or a tree. But my core had been emptied. I needed the warmth of fluid lava. I was cold like Mars in the black of night. As I turned away they wouldn’t survive a minute. Only the ghost of you could walk these barren lands. Only the ghost of you could get an undisputed truth. Perhaps you wouldn’t want it. And perhaps you would walk away, silently slide to the side, keep in your course firm just like the rest. 

So be it. 

This is all I have, the deep empty well craving unspeakable things. 

Close as your ear pressed up on my breast and we cant tell our beats apart.

27 049. Stripes

“Whats the point with life if you don’t treat the ladies nice” he said as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I smiled and felt the atmosphere got milder. The wind didn’t handle me so harshly, it carried me forward and played with my hair. The asphalt took my steps and sent me off with a gentle push. People smiled behind their grumpy everyday faces. Music played. I suddenly felt silly for worrying so about the future. Things would work out. They always did.