If I so desperately yearn for human connection, where does that constant trepidation come from every time I have to meet an actual living human being? Why do people seem to be so much more captivating in their refined, textual form? Is it because books don’t exhibit annoying habits or have foul breath, or is it all down to my own shortcomings that I try to hide?
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
‘War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.’
Carl von Clausewitz, On War
We need children after war—
lots of them—
and so we need mothers and fathers.
…mothers and fathers…
Who would have thought: war—
a dating app,
available on all platforms.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
If someone I know
that they live in my time zone
reads my latest poem at two in the morning
(likes have a timestamp, profiles geolocation),
I can’t help but worry if they are okay.
Maybe they’re suffering from insomnia
or a broken heart, or they’re trying to forget
the pain in a hospital bed,
or they just grabbed their phone
on the way to the bathroom,
but whatever it is, I
am worried.
How selfish of me.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
In the comfort of our solitude,
there are no history books,
only diaries,
with no one to satisfy,
no difference to make,
so perhaps I should contract
some fashionable disease
as an excuse to stay in my room
and spend the remaining time
peeping at the next-door neighbours
from behind the curtain—
a family of magpies
going about their business.
After all, I’m mortal, like them,
and that’s the only hope.
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.
Between commercials and restless sleep, I worry about the closet romantic
who mocks karaoke—mediocre covers of his favourite myths—just to maintain
a cold demeanour that was supposed to shield him from getting hurt again,
because if one day he realises the cure is worse than the disease, I might lose
a convenient fallback topic that distracts from that innate indifference of mine.
My bed is too small even for me, let alone another person—or maybe it’s just my life
that has shrunk somewhere along the way—yet when I wake up in the middle of the night,
I instinctively reach out for the warmth of another arm, knowing we’re not all that different
from mayflies.
hidden pilcrow 