Tales of Eden

  This is how February ends. Nature's softest blossoms and a long stretch of thin sighs sticking onto the last splinters of a hope that used to be. A death and another. Staring into empty hands. A hospital bed. A woman in labour for a child whose casket and clothes await. February is for swift hands that brush off hasty tears.  I linger on the cusps of cyclopian dreams and sink my head beneath double sided mirrors and when I gasp, I do not know whose name my tong'ue speaks. This is how February ends. In Rhetorics. What would you have done in the face of the flames? Would you cradle the warmth in the undertones of your self destructive thoughts? Would you give it room for certainty, say, there is a ghost town of radicals and the best of them are scholars? Say, they make their homes under the ashes of Alexandria and they read the books that were grabbed by flames before arms could reach them? The best of them lawyers. They think Atlantis was better off uninhibited. They speak of

For you, I'll grieve silently. The same way I kept my feelings clutched in my hands while you were here baring your chest open even though I knew how hard that was for you. I'll do it with my head hung low so your ghost doesn't sit on top of my dreams wondering what all the fuss is about. why now? When all you are is a fragrance above the clouds. Why now? When you are just another breath in the wind and your hands can no longer reach the depths of my soul to squeeze out the apprehension that shook my bones and my trust in men like you. I'll shed these silent tears and in this overflow, say the words that never left my lips when your eyes searched mine: I love you too .  They say we speak some words too late. But late doesn't lessen the intent and their truth. Except late has so much weight. Late can crush a single lung with a sigh. Tell me again what they said about time. How it makes love less appealing with age. How it beckons an emptiness for every age. The itch