Goldfish

8 months ago

I was molded differently:

to dry heat sunsets

and afternoon thunderstorms,

lungs deep

of aspens and pine

and the weight of being closer to the clouds.

When life was like a restless summer breeze

nights of insomnia

pages and pages,

reading,

waiting,

for this:

and now,

this easiness,

these late night bus rides,

taking off my shoes to run

and catch my last bus home,

this uneven feeling of solitude

and fulfillment.

Wandering the full length of the city

catching metros

and the feeling of flying

as it dives back into the concrete tunnel,

lost in the sliding doors and wires

of a curved grey

vertebrae.

The need to keep wandering:

looking for something

always someone,

someone new to meet,

someone to change your life.

Entangled and entangled

in people, sunsets, cigarettes,

the blurred spaces between us;

eating up stories and memories

like popcorn in an old movie theater.

I have lived too much this year to keep still

to keep languages on strings

and sew sentences

everything lately

has been mixing together.

The weird way

my brain humms

like a bird

when I am alone at night,

a thousand

thrumming, caged wings

of these ideas and people

I have met, and stashed away

who are just waiting to be forgotten

I can’t believe that one day,

the way these sunsets fade with tea,

the way my host mom transforms

our bathroom into circus tents,

will all unravel and fade away,

and maybe

one day,

I will be able to tell you how I felt.

The way I felt when I discovered someone new for the first time

that beautiful deep feeling

I have filled an ocean with.

Of all the crumpled observations

and sketches that fill my head:

the way these old French houses

have changed with the seasons

and each morning as I pass them

still have more secrets,

the lonely attic windows,

the one misty morning

I discovered fish in the pond

at thabor,

that feeling of magic,

lonely lamps in apartment windows,

the reflection of the trees on the sidewalk at dusk,

late bus conversations,

the taste of mango orange juice after it rains,

the way the sea looks at midnight,

when no one is watching

and the golden white rocked sunrises

and misty blue mountains’ of the Mediterranean.

Things that lay scattered

like those goldfish in a lonely park pond,

caught in the reflections of clouds

that turn into nothingness at night,

left alone in the dark

to think things over.