Dis-Ease

What was stranger yet was the sudden silence. A familiar absence that weaved its way into the days, showing no effect on action or consequence, not even daring to elicit a sense of loss, just noticed as an old familiar absence.

Meaningless comes to mind, but then, what is meaning?

Source: It becomes more difficult to express one’s self when what you want to convey cannot be satisfied with written words; when infliction of voice, slowness of breath, the cover of darkness, tactile tenderness, all beg for the limelight.

One cup of tea promises to solve it, and outside the screened windows of my tower, far below on the cracked cement streets, the evening is on fire with the alcoholic breath of all the young people dehydrating their youth with smoke and fermented beverages. Separate and singular, my head bends and my lips gingerly proceed to sip the chamomile that has seeped into the hot water. White ceramic mug radiates heat, making a home from the small comforts we can afford.

If you ever find yourself disorientated in the water, unable to find which way is up, be still and exhale the last of your breath. As you do, feel the bubbles rush by your face, let them lead you to the surface. It seems we are the very thing we need to find our way.

For me, the image of you below the depths, serves to slow you still enough to study. Where hair expresses as much as arms and weightless body finds its true form thus loosing its affection for clothing. I note the expanse of your lungs, the wideness of your toes, suspended by a trust that fish have no use for; time and age cannot own you beneath the rocking tide. With skin slickened beyond the chance of possession, eluding capture and definition, I almost wish the bubbles wouldn’t guide you, would testify falsely to the direction of sun and lead you down to deeper depths, the sunless parts that keep the cold, where my fingers would wrap around your ankles as water weeds and add you to the garden in my sea. Still enough to study.

It is a slowing in the heart, a patience patterned by disappointment, where expectations are slaughtered in silence and no one cries for their demise. Schooled in the pursuing of lips, tired of my own touch, I stand as a woman-child, as a dreamer, and offer an infectious smile. Eager enthusiasm is my disease.