30 seconds

I dreamt mom was dying
Someone came to check on me
I told her that my heart was inside
a shredding machine
I woke up and remembered
that mom was already dead.

It took 30 long seconds
to remember that. 

Thank you, Bukowski

I am trying to fall in love again. But I keep looping back to a dark place in the middle of embraces and kisses and sex. A Leonard Cohen's song plays in infinite loop in those moments - when behind closed eyes, in the arms of another man, all I can think of is M - his eyes, his hair, his warm kisses on the back of my neck, his beating heart. It all feels palpable and immediate, although it has been 9 months. It feels like yesterday. It feels like today. It feels like now.

(The Leonard Cohen Song: 
I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm
Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new
In city and in forest they smiled like me and you
But now it's come to distances and both of us must try
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.)

Between now and then, my life has turned upside down. Mom died. A pandemic happened. I got a chronic disease. I know, what matters most is how well we walk through the fire. Thank you, Bukowski. I am walking fine.

Sometimes, though, I wake up thirsty in the night, wanting. Wanting nothing in particular, just wanting. Maybe just wanting to want again. A body's Hail Mary attempt to believe that it's alive still.

How many kisses make love?
How many months make time?
If we are in love in a moment, does it count?

Life after M

Tuesday, Dec 17: Second day of life after M. This breakup is final. The relationship was dying. It was in palliative care. Now it is dead. I have to let go. Instead, I have stopped eating. I have started smoking. I stare at nothingness in the middle of conversations. I might get fired if I cannot pull myself together. But I do not care. Nothing matters. I am grieving. The man I knew and loved is dead. The man who has now emerged from his corpse is somebody else. He has lied to me repeatedly, he has been living with someone else, he is going to have a baby in January. He kept me in the dark about each of those things for long periods of time. I still love him. I still cannot let go. I still have an image of us walking down a leaf-scattered road in fall, with lightness in our hearts and love. At a time when we understood everything without talking because souls didn't speak the language of words.

Dog on a leash

Everything is lost. It feels like that. Like I have been through hell and still carry a part of hell inside of me. I cannot let go. My head and gut want to let go - but my heart is like a dog on a leash that I cannot control.

I am going crazy. I am not sure if I will survive.

You had died before I knew you had died.

I was still living with the Absence of you.

The Absence of you, so palpable, like a presence, laid cuddled into me every night as my eyes closed.

You had died and I had not known.

I was cooking and eating and putting clothes in the dryer with a tune in my soul.

Life

There comes a time in life when falling asleep is a pain because of the nightmares and staying awake is a pain because of the nightmares.

The big joys might never come so you might as well celebrate the #littlejoys.

P.S: 14th Dec. #bigjoys came. The paper got published: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31443-5

The battle is between what you want and what you can have.

-Lucy Kirkwood

Stranger

He said to me later that night:
After you left, and I was walking back to my house, I caught myself wondering: 'Was it all a dream?' But then, there were your shoes inside the house - the pair you had left behind - and they were still there and they were real. 

After he had left yesterday in the morning from my place, I caught myself wondering: 'Was it all a dream?'. But then, there was the pack of Fat Tire lying on the chair and it was still there and it was real.

I will see him tonight again. We just met - yet we pretend to have known each other for ages. We have very little in common. (He is a mechanical engineer, he races dirt bikes, he reads sci-fi and fantasy novels, he is fit, he has suffered far more in life than I have yet is more full of joy). He smiles warmly, takes me in his arms, and says he does not want to jinx everything by thinking. I am not thinking either.

He feels like a Bon-Voyage before I move to New York, and my life changes forever again.

P.S: I am in New York. We are still dating. He helped me move. I have met his parents. I have met his friends. He has met my friends. We both love the Duck Song. I discovered that I can orgasm with penetrative sex. I don't fake it no more. (Apr 30, 2019)

P.P.S: We broke up recently. Things are complicated (again) with M. M is back in my life - kinda, but it feels like he is going to disappear again soon. That's just long story sweet and short. (June 15, 2019)

Princess met Frog

One day

A princess

Found a frog

And kissed the frog

The frog had a fungus

Magic-fungus turned princess

Into frog

Two frogs

Fell in love

And lived happily

ever after

And the world missed out on Princess.

If Princess wouldn't have met Frog

She would have conquered America.

But we don't know

If Princess would have been happy

in that kind of future.