there are two things we don't joke about in my family - 1. cancer and 2. love both of which we've watched turn years of building to dust, crumble families to breathing particles and reduce the strongest souls to mere flesh and bones.
there are two things we don't joke about in my family - cancer and love.
a fire extinguisher on fire, a broken ambulance, a wall clock without batteries.
My home is my saviour, but on days it isn't, it's a bombshell, a crime scene, an injured war veteran - and on those days, i'm left wondering who saves the saviour?
when i say that i'm a memory hoarder what i mean is that i hold a reputation of cramming fragile memories in plastic boxes, squeezing different addresses in a single envelope, trusting candy wrappers and shopping bags to bear the weight of unsung days and sliding palm sized pictures in heavy books kissing untouched pages.
i name long drives after playlists and recall dates by outfits. it's funny how i paralyse every moment from the past to keep it close to me - in closets and albums, in flowers and rhythms, anywhere but in my heart.
some days it takes efforts to breathe or do my laundry or remember to eat. I'm not sad but sometimes i wish my chest was more room and less guilt, so that my heart could know how it feels to be home.
My mind hosts more answers than questions. . "I'm fine." "It's not the right time." "Pastels are underrated." "Maybe they do, maybe they don't." "Reading the same book after a year is like reading a new book for the first time." "You don't laugh at the same joke twice. Unless it's the person you love who's cracking it." "It was the way he asked me to read poetry to him, by the sea, at 2 in the night." "Fiction is unexplored reality." "I wear a nose ring more often now." "I fall twice as much as I stand." "I don't think I'll ever learn from my mistakes." "I never learn from my mistakes." "I don't want to learn from my mistakes." "It wasn't a mistake."
Whenever i find myself struggling to write, I read and read and read sometimes for months without producing anything on paper, and eventually I find words come to me Oh so effortlessly!
I'm currently reading "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" by Oliver Sacks. What about you?