I once had a ring
mark on my finger and a tic—
even though the band of gold was long gone—
but now it’s a cup of redbush tea
and a bag of partially rehydrated pitted prunes
bathed in potassium sorbate
on a bachelor Friday evening with webtoons—
I guess I was always destined for happiness;
it’s just that life phrased it differently.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
I never had chemo or radiation,
and the excision was swift and frigid,
with a wound festering for months,
but now, six years later, there is not much left—
a tiny scar where the heart is and the bills
that will always remind me of the growth:
amatoria neoplasia.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Temporarily at a loss for words, I occupy the space
somewhere between a triangular circle and a winged lion,
weary of constantly mulling over salient interrogations,
like, ‘Can you get rid of eczema in two months
when you’ve been cultivating it for over forty years?’
(Of course you can’t; you even botched your divorce,
and you’d only spent half that time with your ex).
Is that why I like peeping
at magpies?
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
I guess I’m no longer looking for anything—
anything in particular, at least
(subject to the occasional surprise).
Perhaps that’s why I have settled on films
with Miss Kendrick—somewhere along the way,
I left behind a pile of first-edition hardbacks,
and my collection of Ikea nutcrackers fell victim
to the financial proceedings—the final stage
of love.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Wrapped in a blanket,
I pass the morning (it’s noon already?!)
with GLS’s letters and a piece of flatbread
with peanut butter and dried apricots
since peeping at long bygone lives
and inventing odd dishes is the most I can do
while I wait for the final act of misfortune
I brought upon myself when, in a hormonal haze,
I followed tradition and a state-sanctioned
cursed primal urge.
How long does it take to live fifty years?
Longer than the blink of an eye, but not as long as you might expect,
sounds about right. Then come all the accretions that stick like a crust
until you can’t tell them apart from your own skin. And when one day
you no longer cry over the shape of your heart, all that’s left is regret
that she threw away your perfectly good wellies, along with the name
you had traded for all the wrong reasons.
It starts with skipping the shower on the odd occasion.
After a while, showering every other day becomes a habit.
Then you realise that washing the whole body once a week
was actually good enough for your forefathers, but since you
are not religious, you end up settling for doing it fortnightly.
You even come up with quite an elaborate explanation
—something about environmental awareness and the like.
But, I guess, personal hygiene is not the worst casualty
of the lockdown-induced remote work, online shopping,
and heartbreak.
They’ve never had more than a kiss,
and even that would be a stretch.
Besides, I knew where this was going
from the first moment I spotted them
sneaking down Back Wynd.
She wore makeup as if it made her life more tangible.
He was nothing short of perfectly forgettable.
Together, they couldn’t be a better future addition
to the divorce statistics. And yet, despite everything,
at that moment, I wished them a glimmer of a chance.
Perhaps I was being nostalgic and probably a tad jealous.
After all, I’ve been there once, and nothing
has been more tangible since.
Love is not a word—it’s an acronym,
but you will never learn what it stands for
until one day a man in a horsehair wig asks you
for its cash equivalent transfer value, or CETV,
and a few other lovely abbreviations.
