Open wide and say aah.

Beauty is all over the place, if you keep your eyes, and your mind, open to it.

Still single? No parroblaame.

Besides, it turns out that sex is a disease. Well, a diseases, to be precise. In fact, it appears that suffering from one of these diseases could very well lead you down a dark and very diseased road.

I am fortunate indeed to have escaped at least some of these diseases - I think. I may have bleahed foully a few times, but I'm pretty sure I've never had Pilsh, at least not with patches.

At my current age, though, I'm concerned I am now a high-risk candidate for Late Marraige. I wonder if oll this is a result of my many years of Improper Menstruction.

Thankfully, I have at least a few hundred rupees stashed away for just such medical emergencies, and as long as that van stays parked where it is, I have nothing to worry about.


P.S. If anybody knows what the symptoms of Paesent Nabje Chaek are, please let me know.

Still here.

I suppose his bones are dust by now. Why can't my grief be like that? It should have crumbled apart and settled into the dark earth that is my past. Why is it still here? How do I bury my grief? I carry it around with me everywhere, and it just won't die.

People die so easily. No matter how, that final moment, that very last moment when they pass from life to death, is so simple and straightforward:  they're here, they're gone.

Why can't grief die, too? I want to sentence my grief to death. I want to murder it savagely or mercifully, but quickly, but I don't. I carry it around with me everywhere, like a corpse that will not rot.

Banging doors is better.

Words are wonderful weapons
and words my special skill
so when I'm passive-aggressive
be glad my tongue stays still

A door slammed twice
A teaspoon flung
into a kitchen sink
a cigarette
some Valium
a syringe
another drink

These are the ways
people try to tell
express the pain
of their personal hell
I know these ways
I knew them well
so I'll say it just once more

Words are wonderful weapons
and words my special skill
so when I'm passive-aggressive
be glad my tongue stays still
my actions will only piss you off
but my words
would shoot to kill.

Mockery in pink (and red, yellow and white).

It's not that they are mocking me. They can't help themselves. They are beautiful, and blooming. That's all they know.

I chose them for their colours:  red, yellow, pink and white; when I went to change the water this afternoon, I found them still vibrant, still alive. It hurt.

Three things, I found, are excruciating to encounter when grieving.

One is laughter from a group of people at the next table in a cafe. It burbles out of their throats so easily, while I struggle to swallow just one sip of a comforting coffee.

One is the sound of a child's voice, the opposite of death. It rings with her hope, but echoes my despair, magnifying my awareness of time running out. Of loss, and losses to come.

And one is the beauty of nature that shines out as a moon or a star or a flower, completely without empathy it would seem, just being what it is:  an amazing, eternally renewing mystery.

Unlike me.

Book windows.

My favourite books were always the ones with windows. Windows through which to escape. I climbed out, or climbed down. Down a ladder, or maybe a string of bedsheets knotted together. Sometimes I sailed out. Sometimes I flew.

Some book windows opened onto gardens, at least two of which were secret ones. Into battles, into dormitories, into other worlds. Some led me into the past, or the future, anywhere but here and now.

Book windows didn't have jailers or monsters or snarling dogs or snapping crocodiles waiting for me outside. Or, if they did, I knew it was just part of the story, and I'd get past them eventually. I'd turn the page.

I didn't need pictures. I could have them, of course, some pictures are special. But they weren't absolutely necessary. I didn't need pictures or SFX or animation because the book windows always led to the most amazing place of all:  my mind.

Getting along with grief.

My grief and I go walking 

together everywhere.

It’s curled up like a foetus 

somewhere behind my breasts.

It’s not human. 

It’s not animal, or plant.

It just is. 

It’s a something I can’t describe, 

because I can’t see it. 

But I can feel it.

I feel it there almost always.

The moment I take my mind off 

mundane matters like being alive,

and staying alive,

there it is. 

Sometimes it sleeps 

but when it is awake 

it is a palpable ache I can do nothing about.

A name, a song, a conversation, a smell.

Gothic words from Books I once loved.

An I Love You whispered in the margin of a dead boy's letter.

Or just numbers added up on a scrap of notepaper,

in the quavering script of an old man’s hand.

A feather.

A regret.

A memory.

All these things waken it.

Some tears, some sighs, some pain,

And then I am ready to soothe it to sleep and try to ignore it again.

No difference.

The world was supposed to feel safer.
The air was supposed to smell clean.
But this death of a monster didn't change
a thing.

For this ending that came without justice
without confrontation
without resolution
I cried.
I cry.