I asked you what you wanted
me to write and you said it
doesn’t matter that you would
read it anyway that it could
be about the nonchalance
of oceans that wage storms
on somedays, that it could be
about heartache and the
warm flood of emotions that
rush to your chest cavity as
your heart leaps out of its
cages and into an outline
on a page.
So, I ask you if I could ever
pull words together to describe
what we have, that this invisible
rope of connection tied between us
could ever translate well into
devices,
I ask you, “How do I describe you?”
The way your mind races
faster than mine , pulling me,
out of breath and tired, along on
adventures I can’t make sense of
and impressions I don’t care about.
You tell me, to write about the way the
sun shines on the side of the roads we
walk together and how much
the things we say might cost us,
and how;
we look back at pictures from months
ago and talk of it like its from
a different lifetime/
your eyes gleam when I say your name/
the freshness of the grass
we lie on make shapes
as we shift under a sun
that can’t help but shine.
I tell you that I’m trying to
put words together and that
they all taste strange in
my mouth, like they’re filters
on french windows,because
nothing I write could compare
to the inaccessible parts of us
that can only draw themselves
with accuracy.We’re like a unique
kind of déjà vu, with unfamiliarity
seeping through only when we
translate moments into words
and submerge the novelties
that we’ve long given up, to take
up more space and spread the
distance between us. If we parted
ways without reason, I’d walk
away with contentment for the time
we had and if we speak again,
I’ll tell you, that the time hasn’t
done much for me; I still don’t have
words for you but I think of us
like two bright stars
collapsing into each other, burning
off of combined energy and settling
only for a galaxy that is vast
enough to contain us.
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Fiercely Tender: The Simple Complex World of Michael Ondaatje’s Novels
Shortly afterwards in that novel we encounter a celebration of the body, grime and all, unimpeded by this abstraction called mind. While writing the body might seem not altogether unusual, my point is that you cannot simply assume its naturalness. Language, even fictional language, is so much of a mentally...