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.
Of all the fallacies, Golden Age thinking is the one
I could least likely fall victim to, since I am a poet,
and being miserable is in a poet’s job description,
whether it involves the present, the future, or the past.
And what is this happiness everyone’s talking about
anyway, let alone how and where to actually find it?
If anything, not having been born would be the only
glimmer of happiness I can think of, but it’s too late.
I can’t remember what came first: I stopped dating or going to the beach,
and honestly, I’m not sure that’s even something worth dwelling on
since, considering those measly three dates, there wasn’t much to give up on that front,
whereas it was the beach that made me stay here all those years ago.
But don’t worry; I’ll be fine. After all, I was raised in tough times—I can survive
a minor withdrawal.
Instant love costs little—a cinema ticket
or, better even, a subscription to a streaming service;
and then you can watch her, for as long as you live,
in the farewell to the circus, wondering
whether time was a healer or a disease,
with her desire for love, expressed in a foreign language,
yet as familiar as the sight of a brush against her bare shoulder,
something you also once did, long ago, to someone
you can barely even remember.
Let life insist on being lived—not out of solidarity, of course, but as a reminder of the youth
you once held dear, like any other souvenir that has temporarily come into your possession,
except, perhaps, for acne or all the juvenile plumage you resented for so long back then
and now quietly pretend it was actually inconsequential—in fact, it never really happened,
you tell yourself—which, even though it’s an acquired habit, has become second nature to you,
just like the fear that one day you will wake up in the middle of the night and simply forget
to be afraid.
Perhaps history is impatient and likes the old-fashioned way,
so it would never walk you further than from yours to its own
prematurely announced end, only to, with a slightly ironic smile,
mark its face on the necrology—written by an aspiring visionary
over a lot of coffee and cigarettes—with a casually scribbled
moustache and bowler hat, and yet I can imagine Charlie Chaplin
working feverishly at a click farm.
Time flies when you’re having fun, or so they say,
but to be honest, I can’t really call my life fun-filled,
yet five decades have flown by in the blink of an eye
without me even noticing, and now I’m staring
at a white-bearded face looking back from the mirror
and wondering what was the point in laughing
at that kid who thought fifty years was a long time
when I probably have twenty or thirty more to go
and can’t even imagine making it through a week
of family Christmas gatherings.
Nothing beats the hypnotic mechanical movements
of the Friden calculators at Consolidated Life
after a week of testing spiritual resilience with Hallmark Christmas flicks.
And it wasn’t even in Technicolour—although, come to think of it,
that might actually be part of the reason
for its soul-restoring power.
hidden pilcrow 