Portraits in Letter

Category: Uncategorized

  • Goodnight Talya

    tree_sunsetSometimes when you go to sleep
    I stay awake to find myself
    But mostly, I watch you snore away in peace
    Like watching the beating of my own heart
    Trying to remember
    What I thought love was before you

  • Home

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    You say you want to go away, Go! Travel the world in search of a little comfort. Take the flight and taste all its delicacies. Only remember this. One day you will look down from the sky, at a valley that looks familiar. Home, with its cheap paint and run down walls will call your name from the depths of your soul and you will know you have never loved any place quite like that. Like your first love, the scent of the dry red earth just after the rains will call you, and you…you will come running back.

  • Sweet silence

    bridge
    Silence, blackness, me in the middle
    Slowly and surely my dream comes back
    When in that sweet silence I sat inclined
    To seek the companion who grieves in my absence
    Who claps at my presence like a friend for another
    A heart  for its owner, a ship for its captain
    Loneliness is a blessing when the heart has much to say.

    And so I listened to the dreams that I had
    Like a mother to a child, afraid to see her fall
    A mind to a heart, to counsel and nurture
    “Dream less,” she said “lest you are dreaming alone”
    My heart in pain looked up and said
    “But whom I love I’ve given all”
    Does love come back in that same form?

  • Nowhere

    sheep
    Take long walks in untamed unusual parks
    Have pointless meetings in start-up restaurants
    Join that contest you know you’ll never win
    Take some paths that lead nowhere
    Because nowhere is a place too
    Most times, nowhere is a place of rest

  • Call me Damascus

    syria-1055488_1920You ask me questions then you tick boxes
    What does that mean?
    I have more to say but language fails me
    Because the fire and the deadly heat
    They linger in my head, like living ghosts

    There is another story that I need to tell you
    One whose box is not on that page
    You think you are somebody?
    I used to be somebody too
    With colourful clothes and shiny shoes
    And a handmade bag to carry my things

    There in the fading horizon
    Lies a place I can never return to
    You too will never see that place again
    This body is the only memory left of it

    So call me a different name
    One that does not tie me to the journey I’ve travelled
    Do not bind me to the water and the tide
    Or chain me again to the fire and the flames
    Call me a name that preserves something old, something beautiful
    Call me Damascus

  • Completion

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    The depth of your gaze
    It takes me to everywhere you’ve been
    You make me nostalgic from memories that are not my own
    And long for a place that is not even my home

    How can  you know yourself so well?
    The shadowy spot in your place of light
    The speck of truth that hides in your lie
    How long did it take to come home to yourself?

    You look at me as if you know things
    As if you have the answers to questions I cannot ask
    As if you see through the bravery I wear
    Long before I am home, where I can take it off
    The way I take off my coat

    I wish your completion was contagious
    That by loving you I too could be complete
    That I could find the home that lives in me
    Perhaps it can be… contagious
    Except I do not love you
    So I must find
    Other ways of being complete

  • City magic

    1406313253044[1]Two teenage girls with made-up faces stand gossiping in the corner
    And then magic!
    The doors open and shut and they disappear
    A man in a suit leans on the pole, reads a book about Obama
    He shares the pole with a boy and his roller skates
    A well-dressed woman constantly checks her watch
    Another well-dressed woman sits nervously at the back
    A grumpy man by the door yells at a little girl for brushing against his bag
    A young mother tries to fit her stroller in a little space in the isle
    The woman across her asks to pass her crutches from beneath the seat
    And then magic!
    The doors open and shut and the combination changes
    A young man with dreadlocks carries a shopping bag
    A couple with backpacks and a travel guide hold hands and share a kiss
    A teenage girl carries a textbook and a file with other papers
    A tired looking woman uses her scarf to cover her mouth
    The doors open and shut and the magic keeps happening
    We are city people!
    In that wagon we are shuffled and reshuffled like a pack of cards
    And given out to the city, to make of us what it pleases

  • Old shoes

    shoes edited
    How many roads have you walked?
    You have been walking for so long
    Trying paths that no one has ever taken before
    Taking breaks in valleys that you never talk about
    Crossing dry rivers that you only followed to quench your thirst
    Only to find them lifeless

    When you walk into homes you leave your shoes at the door
    You say it helps you rest your feet
    I have seen them swollen, and cracked, and dry
    Sometimes you say they burn
    You say it’s just fatigue
    Even though you stroke them when no one is looking

    Even after all these years- a lifetime
    I don’t know about the things you wonder about
    When you disappear in the middle of a conversation
    But I want you to know that I have seen your shoes
    And I know, not many can walk in them

    I want you to know that it’s ok to rest your feet
    Or to tell us that they hurt
    And sometimes when the hurt feels heavy
    You can tell us where you’ve been, and where you never want to return
    Or you can tell us what you miss, and what you’d like to see again

    Perhaps we will be brave and walk you there
    To these places you never talk about
    Perhaps not
    But I want you to know your shoes are big, and strong and worn out from bravery
    Not many can walk in them

     

  • The saxophonist

    saxophonist-1920x1200[1]When the audience was silent and the spotlight shone on him, he lowered his eyes onto that saxophone and blew in it as if to whisper a negotiation, as if to beg it not to let him down. He blew until the begging began to sound like a silent tear, an expression of pain. The piano began to play , acknowledging his plight and urging him to express it, assuring him that it was alright to shed the tear and that it oughtn’t be silent. Together they cried in co-ordination as dancers on the ice, as lovers look into each other’s eyes. Like broken eye contact, the saxophonist went louder, dividing the crowd into two, those that listened and those that played with him.

    He told his story, loudly and bitterly until something broke when the guitar began to play. The three instruments played together as if to celebrate a broken heart’s freedom, the lights shone brighter and the saxophonist looked up to the audience as if to communicate  the end of deep sorrow and the peak of joy. The veins were visible on his neck but he blew harder into the instrument, working with his fingers, beckoning the guitar and the piano, screaming out for joy and falling at the dimming of the lights into a solo storytelling.

    The other two quietened as if to urge him to walk alone the way one would let go of a child’s hand when they are ready to walk solo. Again it sounded like a whisper, this time not a negotiation, I couldn’t quite make it out. It was like a silent whisper that was becoming quieter with every blow. Now I could make it out. It was a resignation. It suddenly went louder like a cry for help then dissolved back into a whisper. He lowered his eyes to the instrument once again, blew into it one last time and silence befell once and for all. He bowed and walked off the stage still in silence. The audience had died with the song and they couldn’t feel their hands.

    The applause that came five minutes later caused the ground to vibrate and the drums to shake as though they would play themselves. She clapped with the crowd, clapped from the bottom of her stomach as she felt a shiver of impression running down her. She hadn’t understood before the power of music but now she did. She’d felt in it the present, she’d moved with it and all its emotions. She’d understood a story of  love and betrayal. She understood it even better because once upon a time, she knew the man behind the music. Nothing seemed different about him now except that now she understood through his music what in the four years they’d been together, he had never uttered by mouth nor by action. He told an audience of a thousand people all the secrets he had never told her when they were alone. He told the world the story of them together and them apart, of their joy and sorrow and love and hate, of how she lied and said sorry and how he forgave and took her back, of how he left her in the cold and never returned again. He whispered into that saxophone the tears he’d never shown her and the anger she never knew. He had whispered those tears right into her ear and now they flowed through her eyes while she stood there and clapped.

    It didn’t matter to her that the tears rolled down her cheeks. It didn’t matter because he was gone and she was alone even in the midst of the crowd and she would be alone when the crowd dispersed and she drove past Ruby street knowing that she couldn’t turn into it anymore.

  • Secret travels

    secret travels edit 2You say you never go anywhere
    But I have seen you travel
    The way you look at her
    Your whole being becomes a place
    And that place is not here.

    Me,
    I am a place too
    I’ve taken you everywhere I have ever been
    And to some places I have only imagined
    I have seen you bathing in the red sea
    Even though you have never gazed upon it

    We don’t belong here you and I
    Let go of my hand
    Go to the places you visit in silence
    I too should like to travel alone now