Dripping Vanilla

I could not give her what she gave me with such gracious ease
I could not return her love in time, & fell prey to this disease.
My heart’s each beat, each breath of my soul – All is Hers -
I love each thing, each speck of dust, yet
nothing in this world can replace her touch,
her sweet scent, her breath, her love.

I have lost all sense, all desire, all will;
lost all false reasons to roll my rock up this hill.
I am content. And so, I lose my self
in her sweet memory – what else do I have? – and desire no more
than to live in this dream
and be washed off of this eviscerate shore.

I have no secrets left. I once knew you but you no longer remember. After this rainy season, perhaps even I would forget. I saw each face I knew become bigger, firmer, more mature, harder but ultimately an array of loose skin and fragility. Between the fold of these wrinkles I can count my heartaches, but there is always the night with its solace of forgetfulness.

Once as a child I could hold onto a moment. When my mind was not polluted enough to constantly think about time. The world passed on, ran away, and as I started running with it, everyone I knew walked their own paths. Each of us terribly alone in this journey, finding our own illusions to believe we have someone with us. Someone who can look over our shoulders, someone on whom we could lean. And we do, until they slip away like a wave.

But there is always that moment in our childhood, before we are pushed into the boxing ring to fight out for our survival, when just standing with a balloon was everything the world was about.

The fog here would never clear. This is an interminable sequence of blinding moments. What is visible is the lack of visibility, seeing which we calm and content ourselves. A chill running down the spine. A heartbeat too carelessly lost in time. It is in a moment, in its energy, and not just its scent or sight or touch or sound, that love resounds beyond rationale or logic. A nakedness of souls, all barriers destroyed in the light of ignorance of their meaningless pasts. Not knowing any thing about any one is the only manner in which you can really know them. And in that moment, the fog ceases to exist because our mind’s eye has turned inwards. And turning inwards it sees with a sparkling clarity that love of ours which we would normally try to find outside.

Can we bend this fabric of tears, the web of its dryness encapsulating the wisdom of all ages?