this room’s not for rent
Know that when a jammed door will not budge, it’s because the air behind it, simmering with discontent, has coalesced into a blob of a figure resting its weight against the door, like a human is wont to do when he doesn’t want you barging in.
You see, even rooms want you to respect their personal space sometimes.
So leave it be.
beetle mania
The stone tossed the beetle into the sky, knowing flight makes it happy. And the beetle grabbed leaves while airborne, as a souvenir for its friend. They stay away from water, knowing one will sink while the other swims.
So there is much sadness when it rains heavily.
The next time you see a beetle zig-zagging madly, know that it may be grief-stricken, because its friend has slipped under water.
Gone, forever.Whenever it pours, tiny hearts break.
circular logic
teabags in hot water, washing machines, bicycles.
a few cycles, and the flavour is gone, the load over, the destination reached.so live harder. before your cycle is over.
balloon girl
Balloon girl had enough of drifting aimlessly in the sky. She threw her weight to one side, to steer her rubber sac body as best as she could, into the flight path of an oncoming aeroplane. The pilot never saw her.
She popped, and plunged to earth like the expulsion of a foetus from a mother’s body, while the rubbery remains fell alongside, like airborne placenta, till they all collected in a bloody mess on a field.
Because, you see, death from that state is birth, and she needed the plane to push her out of an existence that was never meant to be permanent. No, it wasn’t a death wish at all; just the insane desire to really live, to feel the wind in hair and taste the air, even if only for a short while.
Balloons aren’t all happy things, she would know, and now her body tells it so.
her sweet toes
what is the good in well-formed toes,
when you can have five sweets apiece, per sole?so candy sprung up to take their place
and left the girl wiggling lollipops, amazed.the multiple deaths of a rosebud
the rosebud caught my eye
before it drowned.
yet it was dead
plucked off its stem
long before it was tipped into my cup
and scalded.it was those hesitant petals
slightly open
dry and gently flickering
that made it seem alive.i sipped its watery grave
i drank the flower tea
and wonder if anyone mourns
the remnants of a beverage.contaminated.
Every time I fall ill, my body gets a chance to reset itself.
And it always tries to, even after three and a half years of working irregular hours. It always tries to.
I – mercifully – stop worrying, because there is only one thing for me to do: get well. I sleep lots, and I sleep early. I wake early too, have breakfast at breakfast hour, and would have done so much more by the time the clock hits 12pm, then I normally would have.
Everything’s great, including – and very possibly especially – the wallowing in self-pity, which feels totally justified. Until of course, I start getting better. Then, bugger all, everything returns to the way it was.
I cannot seem to relax, because I’m hyper aware that there is an expiry date on leisure time. These thoughts stick in my head: What are you doing with your free time? Are you wasting it?
No matter what I’m doing, I am consumed by the manic thought that I must make full use of this precious time. Time is not for wasting.
So, while on medical leave, I can be trying to take things easy, just lazing in front of the TV, spending time with my pet rabbits etc… but I’m in a sort of frozen panic mode. Then, when I look at the clock after any activity, I kinda unfreeze into full-blown neurosis – realising that two hours have passed, for instance, and I have achieved nothing.
I have nothing physical, material, to show for it. Nothing to show myself.
Which is not to say that I find relaxation, intrinsically, a chore. I merely find it incredibly difficult to let go of the notion that time is limited, and if I don’t maximise its use, it’s gone and I have to go back to work. Especially as this is the time I wish for myself, every single day, five days a week.
Constantly aware time’s slipping by, I mentally police the passage of time by recounting what I did since square one, while I’ve physically moved on. Like recounting what I did from the moment I woke – to drill into my skull that I did do something. Sometimes I recount, minute to minute. Yes, you can’t relax at all this way.
Let me tell you right away that this has unhealthy repercussions, because you lose trust in yourself. And you begin to really exhibit signs of medical neurosis, repeating certain actions unnecessarily to demonstrate to yourself that, yes, you have indeed done something.
I am clear on what is most important to me in life. Yet this happens to me often, even when I’m on a holiday. Therefore I extend my “me” time by sleeping late, so I can do more.
And my health gets affected again.
I guess if everything is a matter of perspective, maybe the viral infections I keep getting are actually blessings, and it is I who is the virus.
And maybe, like all bugs, I flourish in contamination.
jill’s story
why jack stayed single monsters in my backpack
there’s a kind of desperation in the air, and it has moulded itself to my back, like a backpack of doom.
be a ‘hopeless’ romantic
they say romantics are hopeless, but it is the surfeit of arrogance that leads to the forfeit of dreams. without idealists, what are we?
