12.07.2011
& on feelings posted at 12/07/2011 04:16:00 PM
Dissolver of Sugar
Rumi
Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me,
if this is the time.
Do it gently with a touch of a hand, or a look.
Every morning I wait at dawn. That's when it's happened before. Or do it suddenly
like an execution. How else
can I get ready for death?
You breathe without a body like a spark.
You grieve, and I begin to feel lighter.
You keep me away with your arm,
but the keeping away is pulling me in.
Pale sunlight,
pale the wall.
Love moves away.
The light changes.
I need more grace
than I thought.
****
Rumi has always held a soft spot in my heart, despite Islamic scholars saying that, "no, it isn't about homosexual love," and it's so easy to ignore those facts because Rumi writes in a very non-gendered way, and it's love in it's purest form.
I first encountered Rumi in class, and ignored his poetry in favor of a Sylvia Plath one, after the class, I re-read him and wondered if he was Middle Eastern. Months later, I broke up with my college boyfriend, and in the middle of pulling me out of running myself into a wreck, my mentor, Ricci, pulls out a thick volume of Rumi from her carpet bag randomly. In the middle of our conversation she says, "Babe, I really want you to read this. I want you to read and understand Rumi the way you have to understand Neruda--with painstaking slowness, detail, each word scrutinised and felt."
I asked her why, and she said, "I think you'll understand what I mean when you read him." I returned the volume to her after glancing at it, and when I got home I started looking for a complete volume of Rumi's poetry--and slowly, painfully, I got a glimpse of understanding.
These days, Rumi always comforts me, calms me down. He understands the kind of love that wishes to give but cannot.
Labels: love, poetry, sad
12.05.2011
to be quite honest; posted at 12/05/2011 03:38:00 PM
I don't think he loves me as much as he did his last lover. I know he's over it, but I know he won't ever be able to give me that much. This is a fact I need to get over--I will not be posted in photos of his own accord, I will not be thought of always, I will be seen as selfish at times, I will not content him if I simply go along as it is.
But I have no choice--if I value being sane and alive, if I value only the barest minimum: survival, then I must leave a little space for myself, the smallest. Most compact. To want nothing.
 |
| Nerisa Del Carmen Guevara, from her book Reaching Destination |
I know that he loves me to the fullest extent of his heart, and that he does his best. I know that it is useless to mourn such a small thing, and useless to mourn love that would never come but I feel so delicately, I guess, more delicately than I would permit myself to admit. And this is what has always been missing between us--he would not have dropped his life for me, unless I ask, would not have given unless asked for, and what is such a request granted if it had to be asked in the first place?
I remember his past lover's things stagnating in his old apartment, where he constantly asked me to occupy--out of consideration to him, I let it be, and later on, out of consideration to myself, I asked for it to be gone. And that is how it has always been, me forcing open shut doors and seeing only what wounds me, and deciding, later on, after telling myself that he would do it of his own accord for himself, realize it wouldn't be so. And so I ask.
I believe in sacrifice and giving, but I understand its beauty only when given freely, perhaps pointed out later, but nonetheless; freely.
Today a friend wrote on their Facebook, "occupy yourself so that nothing else can," and to me it sounded like the best advice for not drowning. I must, once again, learn to be small.
Labels: feelings, ignore me, love, sad
12.01.2011
meet mario: posted at 12/01/2011 04:36:00 PM
If anything I'm just glad I've got a partner who tries to understand me the best he can, at least. Sometimes I just wish he'd tell me what he feels honestly though. It's hard when I feel that I have to keep on second guessing what he feels like, it kind of makes it difficult to cope with the relationship and my insecurities keep coming out when I have to deduce what he feels. Is this selfish though? I just want to keep him healthy and not have him handle my episodes--because they're mine.
While I'll acknowledge that starting this relationship with him flicked that trigger, I regret nothing--if this is the price it took to chase happiness with him, someone I hope is the one I can spend the rest of my life with, then I couldn't be happier.
I just want to make it easier for him--for us.
I hope we work out.
Labels: feelings, love
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