I long to write. To write again. To write after a long time. To write because I know no other recourse. No other way to weave portraits of my dreams. Or to bade my nightmares goodbyes.
Because today, more than yesterday, the dreams are worst than nightmares. The voices reverberate like monkeys on my back. Like two headed monsters threatening to devour every piece of me. This fragile soul. Usually in small bits and pieces until not a trace is left, like in a crime scene splattered with blood.
It is the wee hours between yesterday, today and tomorrow that are most unbearable.
And so I long to write. I write to remember. I write to forget. I write to tame the monsters. To color. To scream. To dance. To rejoice like lovers when they make love.
I write to be lost in silence. In the noise. In the wild rumpus.
I write to keep still. And to capture the poetry that allows me to be.
The soft kisses I get on the road in between the heart of an enigmatic young boy and in a paradise of a beach called Puka.
The morning coffee, shared under a yellow sun. Holding hands. Half awake, half asleep.
The infectious laughter of a little girl. Her smile. Her tantrums even.
Then there's the poetry of the sound of the rain, splattering on the roof.
Of sunrise. Sunsets. Of roosters, crowing at dawn, slicing into the stillness of the night. The sound of hope. Of new beginnings.
Of road trips and border crossings. Of moving from one time zone to another. Of falling in line at passport controls knowing that Jes will be waiting on the other side.
Java, Indonesia. Tea pickers. The massage. Drinking tea in a warm place in the middle of the heaven, in a mountaintop.
The laughter of two children whose language I don't understand.
Waking at dawn to witness buddhist monks in their orange robes whisper their morning prayers.
To see stretches and stretches of vineyards from Paris to Italy. In a bus. Traveling alone.
To be in a paradise of a beach and know that the anchor will keep me in place. Safe and sound.
Of the ebb and flow of the daily grind. Of the struggle to beat the deadline. When the clock reads 3:30. Or 4 pm. And a good story has been sent. There is poetry in this often messianic ritual. Messianic, yes but good.
I find poetry in stringing words together.
Like wearing an unwashed coat during winter, or the comfort of clean sheets. Like a bowl of Tomyum when I am sick and the thermometer reads 38. Or a hot shower when it is freezing cold. Like a duvet in a foreign land. Or a cup of warm cappuccino where there is none.
But.
But the words are lost today.
