metamorphosis

This winter is schedule, delicately shaped, not a life. I can’t say anything about what I want from this season. The sun smiles in a hazy blur, assembles dust, yawns in the twilight and then goes. There is nothing of real consequence to distinguish the summers and winters. The details were once different in the lives of every season. The stories were always the same. Navigating the inevitable differences in the language of wind and the variations of sun and moon, I am forced to conclude that the novelty of December this year resides primarily in the altered mood.

My existence is reduced to a collection of sounds: the whine of the clock’s tic tic, the smoldering sonance of the new brand Gudang Garam, the hum of a lazy day rewinding certain events, the laments of spams in my cell phone while expecting the melody of that ringtone of a certain caller.. In my exhaustion, fear, and pain accumulated over years, I’ve come to treasure these moments when I can just lie down and forget, when no one is hurting me, when I have someone who listens, chattering as if we have endless time, pining for that sound of strong orderly breathing, as though the person on the other end is lying beside me, with lips pressed against my ears. Such comforts is unexpected, we are so intense, so wrapped up in one another.. I had hoped that the sudden passion will burn itself out. I am not so sure anymore.

I had betrayed myself with talents unexploited, voyages never taken, promises unfulfilled. There had seemed nothing left of me until – oh why in my lovers must I always search the broken image of my own self? The setting moon was like the early moon of the dusk, a vaporific bedeviled disc, and the sky draining of dark washed with gray but from distant balconies came the throaty rumble of pigeons. I had kept up my search for someone who could tell me at least a little about the ‘other side’. I didn’t find my informant. He has found me.

Now as I look at the foggy dawn, my heart isn’t cold with the death of love. I no longer wish to create new categories of sins or expand the old ones. I think about order, stability and other extremes, the many small, sad, silly extremes that can make up a settled life. I don’t expect miracles, a faithful reminiscence of certain expressions on that face are more than enough to animate my cloistered life. Missteps can poison the purity of a future, the only reason I may occasionally be less than forthcoming. On bed every night, I think about the dolls I had as a little girl, the homes we’d set up for them, embroidered silk scarves, and try to banish the shadows of panic that I still cant help feeling when I think of marriage.