LOST GIRL IN BALI
memories of pain and memories of light, witnessing how love is cut and dried. first time in a foreign land alone i understand that these strangers are not gentle with me, sentiment, in reusable phrases and gestures but these affectations of love do not imply that it exists. pack up, wrap up, deliver these kisses to the next willing stranger because i do not want them.
Seminyak Beach, Bali, January 2012
but i am so happy here, bali has a momentum that suits me – slow bossa nova in afternoon cafes, acoustic guitar riffs on the beach, laughter and pulsating music as night breaks, there is a space for every kind of beat that you feel like and good people who dance and laugh and sing like their spirits are on fire. bali rewards those who love life and camaraderie, freedom and change, it is the lightest place i know and i am here for the good times.
BLOCKQUOTE
Sunsets and teapots
And springtime sweat
All spell your name now.
The sky spells your name now,
As do the oceans and the breeze.
And for that, I must say,
I cannot forgive you.
LINGER
how does this go, you ask.
i will say i have lost all ability to reason. i have lost the fortitude to rationalise, picking points of contention and compromise to debate. i have lost foresight and the memory of scars, cognition inundated by grief. (i can’t breathe.)
i remember you. i always imagine you a bit more elfin in my head, a touch more tip upon your chin than your actual defiant set, a certain impression of watchful languidity. in your nascent paradoxes i watched you, delightfully new to me and strangely captivating. barely twenty and a soldier, and yet you had a penchant to pout like a spoilt child, limby swagger and petulant lips which soften when you are asleep, seemingly smiling and curled in pillows. one point eight and still you could drape, finding centre of gravity between your right arm and legs (on the table), balanced upon your skeletal swivel chair. i found my own centre of gravity in the drone of your voice, in the pit of your palm, right in the middle of a stubborn little boy and a proud young man and i embraced them both. on the edge of your stoic wisdom and fairytale demands i rested and i was good. i was well. i was peaceful and i adored you more than you could ever imagine. i poeticised everything you did, every moment we were, and thought them beautiful and perfect, like a sunday morning awake in bed. would you call this love?
in the aftermath of pain i remember. my memory lingers over your focal points – the bunion on your third finger, your adam’s apple (hah), the pitch at which your voice breaks in laughter. how, when lying, my arm stretched perfectly to touch your hipbone with my wrist. your proportions are particularly pleasing, and particularly familiar. i remember it bent over your white bike, with newly tanned skin and the smell of spotless spring. the perfect spectacle. a modern prince. (i remember it in front of me. do you know riding pillon is the most intimate thing in the world? it says i am here. this is me, placing my life in your hands. these are my arms around you, this is my head looking over your right shoulder, and we are watching the universe leap past.)
you hated the boy-watching but i watched you most of all, curling tendrils of my obssession around your being and following you home.
what do you get when you put a defiant scout and a sulky girl together? one quietly trustworthy, the other playful and insistent. you taught me to be in loyalty, in faithfulness, that it was really all about one special boy and building trust, and i was quietly learning. through my lessons i adored you the only way i knew how, holding you close, tighter than you could bear.
defiant scout and a sulky girl indeed ; my gripping hands tugged at your taste for freedom and we raged like a tempest, two proud individuals struggling to survive. facing the heat of your words i hurled breakups in raw emotion, fighting to find balance, pushing to be heard though tossing ultimatums in the air. call it a defense mechanism; i shielded myself crying break, break! to protect myself from the force of your anger till you could be at peace, to listen as i fell piece by piece back against your chest, not knowing the recoil of my defense beat you, never intending that my defense should attack. spoilt girlfriend i who has never been served an ultimatum, was to be served a greater lesson yet and so in my ignorance i rubbed your sides raw, chipped at your pride and stretched you thin, never realising each time scarred you and wore your passion away. (what should i say? how should i pray?) how does one come back from the point of no return?
i pray.
to thank God for this necessary lesson.
that you may understand that i was too careless to comprehend the depth of the hurt i was causing, that you may accept that this depth was never intentional, and that you may believe that i loved you in my silly little ways, wrong ways perhaps, but deeply and truly.
for forgiveness, His, yours and my own, and that i may be renewed and humbled, ready and worthy for the love He decides to send my way again.
How many different ways can one emotion fail you?
- ivyblossom
for all the lost things,
i cannot love you anymore.
