Life is a curse—a sentient one all the more so—yet we cling tenaciously
to this self-perpetuating whim of fate, failing to see that we are nothing
but victims of Stockholm syndrome in a vicious circle of reproduction,
with the upshot of comatose reason as a fig leaf for weaponised intimacy;
nothing that an episode of hentai and a box of tissues wouldn’t have solved.
If only I had known this all those years ago, or better yet, if I had never
been born to have to learn it.
If someone asked me if I was happy, I honestly wouldn’t know
what to say—not because I don’t know myself,
but because I don’t know what I’m being asked.
Happiness is one of those buzzwords that’s been around since time immemorial
and supposedly puts us above the paramecium, to name just one,
but I feel like we would have understood temporal multidimensionality sooner,
even though physics professors who study it are few and far between;
yet it can’t simply be reduced to an exercise in stale semantics.
So what is this chimaera we chase to the point of obsession,
or should I say, this phantom itch we don’t know how to scratch?
Whatever it is, there will always be those all too happy
to make a killing on the back of it.
I read somewhere that the four-dimensional
topology of the human body is trivial,
and I thought there must be something to it,
because when I look at my feeble carcass
in the mirror after a lukewarm shower,
I can’t shake the feeling that I’m looking
at a misshaped earthworm on a rainy day;
the latter, at least, has first loosened the soil,
not their tongue.
Life is a no-win situation,
at least when, wrapped in a blanket, wearing two cardigans, I fight
the cold and my own words.
At first, I didn’t mean the inevitability of death
(mortality is actually a silver lining so few can appreciate),
but our innate, boredom-inducing insatiability—the mother of all vices,
or at least many of them.
But then the Irishman said, ‘Something will be mine wherever I am,’
and it struck me that after all these years and places,
one thing has never left me—my guilt.
I watched ‘Language Lessons’ last night,
and honestly, if my Spanish teacher had been Natalie Morales,
I would have fallen in love too, but then again,
what if Imogen Poots had followed through on her original plan
and become a veterinary surgeon? If I had gone to her
to get my hamster neutered (not that I have one),
would I have even noticed her, let alone fallen for?
So here’s the question: What are the origins of attraction?
(And for the record, I find Ms. Poots to be a stunning beauty,
but that’s beside the point—or is it?)
I’ve only ever talked to myself, even if the words were directed at you,
and you wouldn’t hear my voice anyway, as you aren’t here—you never were,
now that I’ve realised that in order for you to appear before me,
I must first dramatise you, assign you a genre, and only then deconstruct you,
finger by finger and toe by toe, until there is nothing left but a bare midriff
with a navel scar, the only evidence that we were once one.
I still can’t believe I like dark chocolate,
and pesto, and a few other things I once found unbearable.
Does that mean I’m capable of changing,
or that I just don’t care anymore?
But it can’t possibly be the latter,
because when I think about it,
there are more bits and bobs I’ve learnt
not to like over the years;
case in point, an indentation on my ring finger
is long gone, but it still hurts
I had it in the first place.
When I visited my home country, I ran into an old crush
that I hadn’t seen in decades, and I wanted to say hello,
but then I got scared of playing the catch-up game,
and she just passed me by without a trace of recognition,
so either I had changed that much since our school days,
or I’d always been only a cypher to her—most likely both.
I’ve never really been sentimental. I avoid school reunions;
I don’t keep in touch with old classmates—living abroad
doesn’t help—so the old ardours should be a song of the past
as well, and yet when our eyes met for a brief moment
and I saw the weariness in hers, my first instinct was
to pull her close and whisper, ‘Everything’s going to be okay,’
but of course my innate cowardice got the better of me.
Either way, the unfamiliarity of my face aside, I sincerely doubt
she would appreciate that old lie, or at least that’s the truth
the cynic in me clings to.
If I fled to Norway with my bubble-wrapped dispositions and unbearable cravings,
would that be proof that I had finally shed the provincial attitude I was born with
or that I was a habitual procrastinator, constantly pushing aside the urgent need
to solve the mundane complexities of my pre-divorce life and start breathing again?
Perhaps I would have met a local songstress there, singing about listening to the ocean
and climbing her way in a tree—not that she would ever so much as glance at a bloke
almost twice her age—and felt my heart skip a beat once more. But that’s impossible,
because first I would have to shower, change, and hit the streets of Granite City, leaving
my granite tomb that I sometimes humbly call home.
hidden pilcrow 