The Walk Home

what surprises you most in what you feel,

earth's radiance or your own delight?

- Louis Gluck

The lamps were lit, the street was pale yellow, and my steps were unhurried as I walked.

I was thinking, it is no longer the night that's catching up with me; it is I who's catching up with the night. I was remembering a particular moment--daybreak, it was--when you made me realize twilight no longer made me sad, the way it used to, for a very long time.

A small, unforeseen smile, a quickening in my chest, the deep, languorous texture of evening--an aqueous joy was rushing through my veins, and I felt light, like a murmur, or a ripple. A faint memory of, of--something brushed my left cheek, and was gone before I could give it a name. The word/s seemed far away, too blurry for me to make out. Or was it a breeze?

I laughed, out loud, and the sound echoed upward, toward the sky (like I knew what sky meant), like my laughter always does when I am laughing, and happy. I felt my heart swell with anticipation. Just a few more steps and I would turn the corner that led to you.

Thoughts of hot tea, of music and books, of hope and love, wafted in my mind like promises about to be fulfilled. I brushed back some wisps of hair that fell over my eyes and quickened my pace. Awake and pensive, by the light of the furtive moon, I knew you were waiting.

Post Script

But there is dullness, too, and gaping time. As much as there is that constant exercise in quiet and contentment, the unaccustomed mind finds the (oftentimes) unfamiliar silences a little disconcerting. What of the previous life spent asking and chasing and turning things over and over until there are only more questions, more distances to run? What of the sleepless nights, the burning days?

But I have books to read, and music to play.

I have promises to keep.

"As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes.

But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think...The truth is you've already heard this. That this is what it's like. That it's what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. "

I will always regret not buying that DFW book.

After the novels, after the teacups.../

To lead you to an overwhelming question...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?

- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

And if I were to be asked about it, I probably wouldn't know what to say.

The heart unknowingly pushes down names, thoughts, entire sentences of long scripts. Memory fades at desire's ferocity. And if it is forgetting which the heart decides on, surely, it can be done.

There are four corners to the typical room. More, to the unconventional ones. The outdoors can be limitless. There is so much space for the mind to roam in. The inanity of insistence at the same spot, of knocking on the same shut door, does not, and will not, make much sense to the remote, impervious day-after.

Unless pointlessness is what the heart is after. Unless it is pain that makes more sense? For, after all, the glory of torment has been much written about, and much fuss has been made out of its necessity.

But none of that for me, now, please.

I'd much prefer not digging at what is no longer there.

And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window panes;     There will be time, there will be time -T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

*title of post borrowed from T.S. Eliot

And would it have been worth it, after all, 
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, 
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, 
Would it have been worth while, 
To have bitten off the matter with a smile, 

- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"