A moment, a pause.

It is inevitable that they come along; first, one, and then, the other. Along with trailing noises--a puppy's bark, some jazz--and the daily sight of things, walls, maybe, or a folded shirt, an empty glass; some invisible door opens, and the moment tiptoes in, with the pause, in tow.

The moment stretches into something almost palpable, and so does the pause. One is made to acknowledge both, and the hours that came before. How long has it been? The question begs to be asked. How long since the once constant companions--endless wakefulness, maybe, or periodic stupors, insuppressible tears--have left? The days have been kind, one realizes. They have brought one to the present, where the certainty of pain, the sting of anguished thoughts, and the seeming permanence of grief for lost things, are but memories, that consign themselves deeper into some indeterminate recess of the healing heart. 

Some dull ache taps one on the arm. But the day waits outside and has, in truth, begun pulling one out of the hour. The interlude ends, and one stirs back into one's locus, where breakfast waits, and shelves need dusting.

Somewhere, the sudden loudness of a door shutting, the footsteps of someone walking away. Somewhere, the sound of someone leaving. 

But here, the sunlight streams in. And for a moment, the handle of the coffee cup sparkles where the light slants, like newness. 

Errors in Conjunctions

1. And my breath catches at the discovery that you still haunt these roads, and those.
2. But I curb the vagaries of thought and feeling; the heart is weakest where memory dictates.
3. Or I could have bought the old book of watches, the bag of coffee beans, the barely-touched Dostoyevsky volume.
4. Yet sunlight still slants sadly over my little shelf of books.
5. For much of this story is undone--locked inside drawers, shut behind doors, swept under rugs.
6. So the hours go by, sinking into slumbers.

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

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little
Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little
Why the Gods above me, who must be in the know
Think so little to me, they allow you to go 
- Cole Porter, "Everytime We Say Goodbye"

It's Sunday morning, again. Still dark outside, and here, too. I will not look for where the sun will soon rise, do not care for that sliver of light heralding dawn. No, none of that for me.

Ella is crooning in the background, and Neil, singing along with her.

What sad thoughts fill the mind.

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"

Your promises:

lackluster, empty,
as brittle as your will,
dust in my hands.

I dust off my hands.

And your hunger is not for experience
but for understanding, as though it could be had in the abstract.
-Louise Gluck, "Moonbeam"

What are these promises for, if not for breaking?

Steadfast, this loop, that goes round, and round, and round, and arrives, always, to give and take, and take away more than was given to be taken.
Nobody said that wish you wished, once upon a transient star, would ever be more than what it was when it slipped out of some random, fugitive dream.

There is reason to all this naming.

The broken heart is a remarkable thing:

it holds on to what it shouldn't, pines after what is gone, long gone; from what is there, chooses what is no longer there and, therefore, can no longer be had; languishes where gloom and anguish are; talks in its sleep and yet, is mute when asked to speak the pain out; slams the door on sunlight and insists on turning all the lights off because they are "too bright", and then complains of seeing darkness everywhere, trembling, like a sick heart, because the dark illuminates what should be obliterated, cloaks what should be suffered.