the hague: 5-7am

distance won't hurt us by meyrem


i hear a mad crash and run to the window. hail, the size of marbles. it's 5am - a pitch-black 5am, if not for the streetlights. come look, it's amazing i say and she jumps out of my bed and comes to see. the sound is enormous. in a minute the whole street, the cars, everything i can see is covered in it. the streetlight just outside my window makes the hail look like fireflies. the street is a pale yellow, a pale fire. we stare out with the window open, a cold rush like a slap against our faces. i want to go outside and slide on it i say. she gives me a quizzical look: better you stay with me she decides. i laugh as i close the window, shaking my head.


___*___*___*

i'll behave, i'll behave i mumble as i hide my face in the pillow. she leans over and whispers in my ear. something in french i don't understand but all the silk of night isn't as soft as her words. hot chocolate and warm showers and lace lingerie stitched together. i'm dead-serious: i won't behave if you do that again. a few moments later i feel her hair against my ear and a little fairy slips into my head and a star passes across my body, my lips go straight for hers. she turns her head a little so i get the side - ok. you weren't kidding she realizes. ___from farther away this time she whispers something into the air. i try and remember the sounds, but they all vanish a second later. dissipate like the loveliness of a summer afternoon i can see the sun set on them and no matter how hard i try i see them go. they're absorbed into me. the memory of them is locked in my bones. __sounds soft as an eyelid. dear god, those sounds what they could did do.


___*___*___*

her hand rubs across my cheek. i've never had a beard before so many sensations are new to me. a hand across my cheek feels brand new. a complete novelty. an amazement, it's gentler than i remember. _but, then again, it's been so long since i had this sort of affection, a caress. maybe it's not new, maybe it's just a rusty memory.
___her hand passes. i see ship's sails unfurling, moons rising, a white dream expanding. i'm suddenly so calm. drifting.


___*___*___*

mid-dance i've lost my temperance and bitten her clavicle. i felt her shudder, taking that as a positive sign i kissed her shoulder, ran my lips against her neck and kissed somewhere behind her ear, just hair and that always-perfect scent women have.
- hey what do you think you're doing!
[i'm still holding her around the waist, with my face against hers]
- i have a legal excuse for my behaviour.
- you don't drink, you never have an excuse.
- i blame the dress.
- the qua?
- your dress, this one [i run my hand up her arm and under her shoulder strap so i'm holding her shoulder]
- ah! so now you're blaming me?
- you bewitched me. how dare you take advantage of me like this!
[she laughs]
[i escape un-slapped]


___*___*___*

when i wake it's light outside. the sun rises about 10am, it must be... g'dammit. it's noon already. i manage two bowls of cereal and fall asleep again. __it's 6 when i get up. another bowl of cereal. what's wrong with you? my roomate asks. i shake my head. i heard voices in your room, did you get to sleep late? i think how to respond to this. Finally: friendly ghosts make for happy nights. he has no idea what i'm talking about. go back to sleep, you can tell me about it tomorrow.

oblivion?

in loving memory of loving memories by anna morosini



sometimes it's night. other times not. __i can't tell really.

i do my best to feel my way through it, a blind worm to each day.


___*___*___*

i crave aloneness to a fault. i crave it and satisfy myself until i'm well beyond lonely and even then i don't know how to recognise that feeling. it's not a thing that i notice. in the past GF or mom would have pointed it out to me. you need to get out q, you're lonely. the name for this feeling you have is loneliness, that's what it is. and i'd think that's what this is? and she'd nod, and i'd believe her. __is that what this is? i don't know. i haven't had my fill of aloneness yet.


___*___*___*

the washing machine stopped working. i punched and kicked it till i was panting and lightly sweating. i guess the gym isn't the stress-relief mechanism it used to be.

ninety minutes later, of its own accord, the door opens and there are my clothes. half wet, half dry, smelling of sweat and smoke and misery. i stare into the cavity but can't decide what to do with them. can't decide at all. i leave it for another day. a mass grave to exhume tomorrow. tomorrow tomorrow, there's only so much atrocity i can bear in a day.


___*___*___*

she's in bed, reading with tea she tells me. she tells me to come over, her nightcream smells nice she says, she says it might cheer me up. i'm not sure what kind of invitation this is. in all honesty, i'd love to be lost in someone's skin for an hour where i could close my eyes and feel the stars inside my body mix with the stars in someone else's and feel wrapped and blanketed and hide my head in breasts and close my eyes and forget who i was and never think another thought again so i don't lose the moment.
___i'm not sure what kind of invitation this is. i can't risk it tonight. thin ice abounds.


___*___*___*

i haven't slept a full night in weeks.

i order things i don't need off the internet at 3am.

when they arrive i can't remember a thing about them.


___*___*___*

it is dark, wet.
i hear my bike rattle along the path.
the little light flickers on and off so i'm frequently lost in darkness, complete nightness.

just a rattle in the darkness.

so this is youth i think,

this old man adrift in the night-sea, this is youth.


___*___*___*

once upon a time, i left what i knew, and went to the other side of the world. and there i lived on the third floor, in a room shaped like a womb, with dark carpets and a small window. when i woke it was dark, it was morning but it was dark. and i lived on a bike and i read about the most horrible things people can do to one another. and i met people who complained incessantly and i tried to avoid them the best i could. and i stayed up all night ordering things i didn't need off the internet and lived through days like a blind worm nibbling on soil. i ran on treadmills till i was shaped, once again, like a man. i grew a beard and rolled up my pants to feel young. i kissed mostly french girls and slumped on the corner of my bed at 4am unsure of what to do about it, about myself, about tomorrow, about yesterday. i traded what i could to get sleeping pills and i used them like tic-tacs till they were gone. i felt odd taking my glasses off because i felt they hid the dark puffiness of my eyes. i felt lost sometimes. not always. i felt homesick but i wasn't sure for what. i knew when i returned it wouldn't be to any home i'd ever known before. what i had known was gone. disassembled and released back into the river. what i dreamt of had passed, i'd been there, but only once upon a time. and in my most frightened moments all i could see was time before me, and i rattled along its road, looking this way and that, hoping to get a glimpse but my lamp would flicker and what i'd see was only in little bursts. in my frightened moments faced with the prospect of my life unfolding before me and collapsing under the weight of my own self and drifting away from me so that it was a thing that happened to me and not always with me and all the time walking through these streets with the same red-brick buildings when i get lost i can't tell where i am. when i get lost i sit on the side of the street knowing that won't solve anything. i only know what i know.
and that seems to diminish every year.
less and less every year, god knows.


___*___*___*

there is too much that i miss.

at least two couches. half a dozen names. decent vietnamese food. seven or eight feelings i don't know the words for. tea that tastes like it has cookies in it.__ more. much more.


___*___*___*

when i wake up, it will be as dark as it is now. always, dark.
always the rattling.