Love and regrets

I've been listening to this song alot recently,

Admiral Fell Promises - by Sun Kil Moon

Come out from the burning fire butterfly
Let me lock you in my room and keep you
For a while
Could you be the answer to my every prayer?
Could you be the one for who I care?

Come into my arms and let your worries die
Come out from the web of all your tangled lies
But be true to me and I’ll be true to you
Judge me not for what I’ve done but what I’ll do

A million nights have led
To this one that we are spending
And I know it’s better here
Than anywhere I’ve been going
With every morning grew
A void more wide and endless

Come out from the burning fire butterfly
Let me lock you in my room and keep you
For a while
You watch over me and I’ll watch over you
And if you go tomorrow choke me ‘till I’m blue

A thousand days have passed
In this house she and I were sharing
And I hate myself for it
But I have stopped caring
The Marilyn sky tonight
Is so black and blue and beautiful

I first heard it when I was in a different relationship last year. It was the type of relationship where we soon found that neither of us could really reach each other and so many words ended up lost in translation.

Yet, we both longed for something deeper, stronger and more real than what we could offer each other.

It was on one of these days particularly when I was filled with a yearning to be better for us, for the relationship, that I discovered this song on NPR. It's beauty and it's hope to reach the other person struck me and I shared it with him. But I feel that it was lost on him.

Now in my present relationship, I've suddenly come back to this song. Nothing in life is certain, there are no guarantees. Life is imperfect. And I've come back to this song because life moves in circles, but this time, the song isn't lost on the one I long to share it with.

Back in the day when I was younger and urgent to share my faith in Christ, I spoke to a friend of mine in class about Him. We were on the phone when I told her about my faith in Christ and how much he loved her, she then told me about her boyfriend and how she felt that she didn't need God. I told her about how a person's love can never be perfect, but God loves us perfectly. This one thing she then said to me has stayed with me ever since, "maybe I love him precisely because he's not perfect."

Today, I discovered something else, growing up, I had always felt that there was something I could have done to keep my parents marriage from falling apart. I could have been better, tried harder, I could have prayed harder, I could have been a kinder, more loving, more supportive daughter to my parents.

Today, I discovered, there was nothing I could have done to stop their marriage from falling apart. There was nothing I could have done to deflect the hurt of a scarred marriage.

Somehow the realization is stunning. I'm humbled to realize it. I could not have willed their marriage to work out. It was beyond my control. I can only learn to make peace with it and try to live my life in the best way I know how.

As I am sure my parents have done.

Shapes

Time and time and time
again,
the colors build
the shapes grow old

Tattered and worn,
tossed and scattered
The edges, worn down
have lost their
jauntiness

I look at you,
you look at me...

I see a faint outline

Who are you and
What are you defined by?

A keen sense for
verbal calisthenics and
quaint accents?

A sloping back
and a slack jaw
in the midst of
sonorous slumber?

A solid nod
and bear strong hands?

A worn-out shape
and teary eyes?

A smile that lights
up your face

...and my life respectively?

I've decided not.

Love defines you.
It's your shape
Love defines you

..and when I strip it down
to the core
There is nothing more
and nothing less

than the shape
I know so well.


Your shape is love.

Esteban

My world is getting smaller

but it’s also getting bigger

I’m sinking into that silky cream

of love and laughter, tears of joy.

I’ve held on to brokenness too long

and now there’s nothing left to cling on to

Neither present, past

nor future tense

The grammer lesson’s over

and now I’m ready

to run with you.

(lets break the bank)

You, Me

If you will be you
So I will be me
If you will glimmer
And shine and herald
All the pieces that make
Our existence more than brine
I’ll laugh and listen
I’ll bid you my sire
I’ll take you into my fire.

The Beloved

Four walls,
Encased
in the living, brooding black
Hot, crackling fury writhes in the vacuum
I crave, I thirst,
I am crawling on my knees

but

Your words,
they break me
They feel like
shattered glass
and the screaming hammer
against the door

A child, blithely
Bouncing, up and down
Up and down
on the mattress.
Even as the world
Crumbles and implodes in the universe of
Her heart

and

The door is marked
With the deep round imprints of unmitigated
Rage.

Give me space not
Broken nights harnessed
By the gnawing, nameless
Certainty that

Tomorrow,

I’ll see the image
Of your back
Walking out on us again

…

Brother, when you read the news
At the dining table, sunlight filters
Thru’ thru my mind

You sit quietly,
in silent enjoyment
That picture fills my heart
And the noise clears my head.

I travel through the
Amazon,
a myriad maze,
Lurid jungle book

The endless tirade,
Those tin gods
Those yells,
Those lusty, knowing voices that
Insist, persist on telling me
With such intense glee

“You’re Wrong
That’s your name
You’re Wrong
You’re Wrong

wash the dishes
clean the house
scrub up, work hard,

SMILE,

Even harder,
Slam down the competition
With your grades,
If you can…

Shut your mouth, … and maybe
Just maybe
Things will get better

But only
if you can
learn how to be good,
can’t you learn how to be
like all your friends?
Can’t you learn how to be
Like them?

This house of cards
Will stand maybe
If you SHAPE UP
If you BEHAVE
If you ERASE YOURSELF
And BECOME LIKE THEM
YOU SICK,
FUCK UP,
YOU PATHETIC LITTLE PIECE OF…”

are silenced.

…

I stumble out
onto a vast green field.

Blinded by the burning sun,
assaulted by the sudden scent
fisticuffs of daffodils
dappling the green, green… green grass,
Fear screams in impotent protest
Then fades away,

And the flowers
wink in quiet
acknowledgement

as if to say ...



….

I breathe deep,
bow down low to a single daffodil
Hold it between my palms
And kiss its thirsty face,
Beauty explodes

Reservoirs of tears,
Engulf me,
Filling the ache.
Reminding me, again
That I am,

The Beloved.

Borrowed Time

Waking past
these early hours
I wonder how you think
and feel

The witching hours
have come and gone
and now we are left alone
so alone

Which way you turn
and how you'll learn
to play the game
and dance the steps
down these narrow paths
as I watch the hours
steal away
on borrowed time

Do what you do
to live, to live
only keep me close and
hold me tight.

As I watch the hours
steal away
on borrowed time.

Notes From a Post-It Note

My childhood friend gave me stationery from Japan about two years ago. Among the stationery I got is a very nifty post-it note stack. On the top left-hand corner of this stationery is a cheeky black cat with big eyes and pointy ears. On the bottom right-hand corner is a little cartoon girl in red holding a red balloon. Next to the cat is a succinct statement that sums up exactly how I feel right now.

"I wish I were a cat. He always enjoys his freedom, taking a nap, walking around, and taking a nap again. Sometimes he makes mischievous tricks on sparrows."

=)