burning

there must be a reason why, valentine
why

they all share the same
patron 

Oh!  of lovers
love, epilepsy, and plague!

go to Indonesia

and take the offer, i want to tell G.  as if it is the easiest thing in the world.  

when asked, "when is M.A. coming back?"  G said M.A. is playing it by ear.  there are no pre-booked flights, nothing on the calendar.  just plans, vaguest possible.  and M.A., wanting to earn more, intends to move further. 

i want to tell G the obvious:  the plans do not include you.  but maybe i am not the best person to say so.  being unreliable, being an unbeliever.

my point is:  if it is love, with all its trappings, it is not impossible to mark the calendar.  if it is love, with all its trappings, the plans must be measurable, must be for two.

Indonesia is worlds away from M.A.  too far, G says.  what if M.A. calls?  what if there suddenly is a plan?  i say nothing.  what to tell G?  take the offer and go to Indonesia.  go to another world.  for now, without her, there is nothing in this old city but lonely.

G says i can take it.  G says i will carry on (while i wait).
i say nothing over coffee, lukewarm, without hazelnut.
















  

what to tell G

1.  M.A. should have arrived in another world by now.  G left behind.  what G must be feeling, not unimaginable.  possibly beyond comfort at the moment.  time when words fall short.  fall into being nothing.  suddenly empty and hollow.  without weight.  what to tell G?  nothing.  there is no need to reiterate what is already known.  a given: how we change moment to moment, how more so, changing moment to moment from across such distance.

2.  when H passed away, R was inconsolable.  a performance artist, a solo dancer, a poet, R has read and heard all the words of comfort, they have become trite.  they all mean nothing, she said again and again and again.  crying there, in her white mourning dress, on a bench beside a convenience store.  i realized there are no words of comfort for a writer who comforts others with words.  in need of comfort, a loss.  i sat across her and listened, a rewinding, again and again of memory until exhaustion.

3.  who is unfamiliar with loss, and change?  and who does not survive?

4.  there is a scar in my memory and it is all healed.  'though it has rendered me cynical, hopeful, gentle, and resigned.   

the persistence of the every day

a student in the university committed suicide yesterday.  because she couldn't pay the fees.



and so she becomes news now.  the activists rallying behind her dead body and its story that no one really heard until it, too, stopped breathing.  behavioral psychology major, couldn't make the fees, past extensions, plus the depression, the family poor, the government to blame, not enough education subsidy, the officials say the uni is not to blame, nor the policies, the students want someone, anyone, they walk out from their classrooms today

but they will be back tomorrow.  and after she's buried, news will be new.  as expected.  the dailies roll.  and every one carries on.