To Love or to Be Free

You raise a glass to toast to my new project. “I feel like I’m part of something big here,” you say. You text me from the room next door to remind me of how much you care. You always call me on your lunch break, always kiss me good bye, always support me every step of the way. Where have you been all my life? I’m happy, yet I’m so scared to feel happy, to spook happiness, to feel commitment, to feel anything at all. It might not work out; one of us might get hurt. And I’m talking a lot more hurt than when your average relationship lasts for two weeks, you know? 

I’m scared. Some days I’m torn, entangled in my fears. Are you really the one? Can anyone really be labeled as “the one?” Will I really have to put aside all of my wild sides, to forget the part of me that travels alone, explores every aspect of life, walks on the edge, rebels against it all, savors freedom? My dozens of frail, short-lived relationships, breaking hearts and being left brokenhearted, hiding the tears of pain and laughing in the moments that have no tomorrows? 

I’m scared. I know it sounds selfish, but I’m used to being independent, used to being with myself. It’s been a while since I committed like that, and last time I did, I was painfully naive. I barely knew what I wanted and needed in life. I barely knew who I was. If I were to marry then, in my early 20s, I wouldn’t have grown into a person I am today, I wouldn’t have had the aspirations and dreams I have now, I wouldn’t have gone for any of my drastic career moves, and I certainly wouldn’t have achieved what I’ve been able to achieve. Don’t take me wrong, I have nothing against the institution of marriage. I just don’t feel like it’s for me.

I’m scared. Maybe it’s not so much about losing my physical freedom, as about losing my freedom to care about everyone other than you, to care about the world, you know, to create, to get inspired, to help others. I’ve learned over time that I’m not as fully passionate about other things if I spend some of that passion on a love interest. I know, selfish again, but I have to be honest with myself. That’s just how I was designed. I’m afraid of comfort, of getting too used to a person, place or state of mind, of forgetting the taste of the struggle, because the taste of love is so sweet and overpowering. When you love, you lose some of your other senses. Maybe I’m crazy; maybe it’s just me.

Maybe they are all excuses. Maybe they are the dark shadows from my past that are fogging up my vision. One thing I know is that there’s nobody who could put up with my oversized gamut of emotions as well as you do. Maybe there is some part of me that I have to give away, some compromise that I have to make with myself and the world, if I am to truly love. Maybe time will dissolve my fears. I hope it does, because when all is said and done, there is nobody else I’d rather be with.

Image credit: ghetto chic

Listening to: the rain

Missing you

The empty bar hangs over a cliff, and in between beer sips and a quiet talk with a couple of friends on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I watch the rain hug the window panes. It goes on like an endless string of silver, only to end a second later, eaten by the angry ocean below. The water drums are complemented by the sad melody of the wind attempting to make shortcuts through the cracks in the roof. A momentary thought of how beautiful this day is crosses my mind.

How are the States treating me, you ask during the long overdue skype chat weeks later. It's easy to get comfortable here and I don't like easy nor comfortable. I miss getting out of my safety zone every day, working to prove myself constantly and deserving the good things that come to me. Just say you miss me, you reply, throwing a few jokes into the mix. Of course I miss you. Every passing moment that is not occupied by my work or my books, or sometimes various petty things society sees as important, I think of you. That is what I want to say, what I mean to say with every fiber of me. But I throw a joke back at you and I don't show even a slightest sign of how much I care. My guards are up. I lose all courage around you. I am terrified of being hurt by you and you alone.

You hope to see me soon, you say during our goodbyes. I can't help but replay that phrase for some fifties time in my head. Do you really? Or are you simply being polite? I gather these crumbs of happiness you've been feeding me lately and I build a castle out of them, avoiding as much as breathing in its direction, afraid it will fall apart before I get the chance to strengthen the walls. I know I've ruined things before, more than once, but I am learning from my mistakes. I will see you in November. And I will prove to you that I deserve you...
so much more than I did two years ago.

Listening to Relax, Take it Easy by Mika

Lie to me

For a second there you gave me hope. You lifted me up, and for one brief flicker of a moment you made me believe again. And then you walked away, as cruel as ever. I fell so abruptly and hit the ground so hard, that my entire being shattered into a million little pieces, each one a reflection of your heart. Do you really love her? Please tell me that it's only a passing whim. Lie to me if you have to.

Image by luminous-luminance

Listening to: Into the Night by Benny Mardones

I can listen no longer in silence

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago… I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant…For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this?” – Captain Wentworth, Persuasion

It is as if nothing ever existed. There were you and me, and then there was emptiness all around. Emptiness can be scary, but if tolerated long enough it comforts, even satisfies. No blissful ups, no heartbreaking downs, no never-ending hopes nor crippling betrayal. As time goes by, you learn to live with yourself, you learn to rely on you and grow happy with your freedom. You think that you are so mature, your heart so strong now that nothing in the world can hurt you as it used to, and more importantly no one.

But one day there comes a storm. A lighting strike illuminates the world around you and you see the things as they are, naked of illusions you’ve created. The reality breaks through the walls of your beloved emptiness and erases the boundaries of your comfort zone, ripping the protective wire you spent so long wrapping around your heart. And there he is, standing in the rain in front of you, and he is the same, and you find yourself utterly unprepared, not strong at all, in fact the weakest thing in the entire world, and it’s as if the last two and a half years apart were never lived. It’s as if you never let him go, as if you never ruined your happiness and his. 

 

I felt my heart skip a few beats and my body shake profusely the minute I heard he was in the country. Memories started flooding my head and the more I remembered, the harder I cried. The room went dark for a second and I had to grab the nearest wall to maintain my balance. Not only have I felt every emotion possible, but I was utterly unprepared to feel so much and so suddenly, and worst of all, I had absolutely no hope of any of these feelings ever being mutual again. I knew he had every right to distance himself. I suspected he’d never forgive me and I have come to terms with losing him, or almost have. I thought I had all the strength in the world, but I had none. I thought I had no love left in me, but I had it all.
 

So I gathered a few bits of courage and wrote to him. I dropped only a couple of lines, asking about his trip, staying neutral in tone and struggling not to give away any signs of my pain. The rest of the day seemed like forever. I heard nothing. I cried more, I drank a bit and I cried again. The following morning I woke up to a note from him. There wasn’t much said, but he responded, and that fact alone made me grow wings and fly through the day. We exchanged a few more words and those words gave me more hope than is probably healthy. I am no Anne, he’ll never be my Captain Wentworth and real life rarely grants us with happy endings. But a girl can dream, can’t she?

To write again

I miss the time when my pen would touch the paper and just run with its own strange effort, at its own pace, as if some knowledge of me was fundamentally laid into its ink, some knowledge I didn’t have, but the pen did. I miss the time when I didn’t write poetry... when poetry wrote me. It wrote my life, because my life was reasonably paced, paced well enough for my thoughts to have the time to settle at the tip on the pen, without me noticing, just to fill the white sheets in front of me at the very first breath of creative air, to my own surprise, to my relief, to my happiness. Life has become so jammed with things. Is it a matter or progress, growing up, or both? Where did they go, all of the creative bits that used to flood my head? They are still alive when I dream, but seem to dissolve every morning. They disappear under the weight of all the burdens I work so hard to multiply daily. They get hushed down by the buzz of life.

Image credit: duchesse-2-Guermante
Listening to Weeping by Josh Groban and Vusi Mahlasela

Once upon a time

I wrote this a while ago but never found it good enough to post. It's not my best piece of writing but it's an honest one, hence I think it deserves the right to be.

He is no longer in my life. I have worked with others since then, I had better friends since then, I've loved stronger since then, and I laughed, and cried, and lived, and broke hearts, and was left brokenhearted. But an occasional thought of him still brings that bittersweet smile to my face, the one that holds both good memories and bad, neither of which I would want to trade for anything in the world. We grow through our mistakes, our experiences and our feelings; we are shaped by what we love or hate, who we love and why we choose to forget. He was only one part of my world during the two years when our lives intertwined, but a tremendous part nevertheless. We put our time and souls into the work we believed in, and we made a great team, but our feelings got in the way. I'm sure there was love among all the fighting, and enormous friendship that struggled to step over our egos, and the two people trying really hard to overcome what made them human, for the sake of that beautiful goal that they always had in sight.

* * *

I don’t want to think where he is right now; I don’t want to think at all. All I want is to break free, fly away from this place of uncertainty and fear. I don’t know him at all.

He calls at 3 a.m. "to check on me", then again, an hour later, asking me to open the gate. One hug and things are back to normal. What a fool I am.

* * *

We run into a little diner in the slum, the one I know is actually good and safe and all, and giggle while standing at the counter. We talk of feelings for some unknown reason, the distant and abstract ones, and he suddenly tells me he never knew how I felt about him. He says that I never told him nor truly showed it. Is he for real? I'm lost for words, only able to produce a silly smile, trying to shake off the weight hanging above us, to change the subject, to say something, but all I hear is the very loud silence. And the moment passes us by. We get our food and walk out, back into the car, back to work, and I am still lost for words.

I kept thinking why I never told him. It was the perfect chance to let my guards down for once. It was either then and there, or never. And I was too proud to go first, or too scared of what it would do to our work and friendship, or both. So I chose never.

* * *

We walk out on each other. We don’t listen. We don’t apologize. I don’t know how to mend this anymore. I am probably able to, but I’m not sure I want to. I am tired of fighting. These arguments grow stronger every day, their roots reach deeper inside our heads. Every now and then I grow so weary of them I reach for the suitcase, only to push it back under my bed; only to convince myself I can endure these things and grow stronger through them.

* * *

I’m sitting outside; it’s a bit chilly these nights. A cheap cigarette is burning my lungs. Heck with it, every cell of me is on fire. And the sky, the sky is the same everywhere. I miss home, wherever my last home was. I miss my family, and the rain (we haven't had any for what seems like months here), driving in the right lane, coffee shops, my girls, having time to write or to think about myself for once versus everyone around me, and the snow. Come to my home in December, I blurt out one evening, in the midst of a quiet talk in his room. He smiles and asks for five reasons why I want him to go. I don’t feel like reasoning anything, so I walk out.

* * *

We are stuck in traffic on our way downtown, an hour of talking, laughing and singing. He presses the wrong buttons as he tries to roll down the windows, he always does that, making me laugh. He buys peanuts from the boys on the road, without taking the actual peanuts. We throw rhymes back and forth and some poetry is born in the midst of traffic, hawkers, beggars and thieves on the road. There’s an unbeatable energy inside of this tiny car. We can change this place for better, we can help the people and learn from them, but only if we are able to sustain this harmony; if we can respect each other and humble ourselves before the other. If only there were more days like this.

* * *

I feel my heart jammed inside, pumping wildly as if ready to jump out through my mouth. I am pressing the tears back in as they burn the corners of my eyes, my arms numbly folding pieces of clothes into the suitcase.

He’s standing in the doorway, the founder of this drama, the perpetrator of this pain. Out of a moment’s anger, he asked me to leave "if that's what I wished for" just a minute ago, and now my pride overwhelms my reason and pain as he’s securing the door with his tall self, begging me to stay. "You can’t leave, this is your home," he insists. "I didn’t mean it like that. I suggested you take a break from work, not leave this place." The arguments keep pouring.

As part of some self-defense mechanism, my memory seems to be erasing the corners of such days, as I can’t quite remember what it is he said that made me stay after all. I do remember a tight motherly hug and a whisper - please don’t give up on my son.

* * *

What roles do we play in this twisted storyline? Why is it that despite the lowest times we’ve been through, the undeniable truth remains the same? We are around each other 24/7, and we fight half of the time, but we need each other only more each day. It’s as if we share this subtle knowledge of something that is not yet, but has been written. It’s something bigger than us, but not until we manage to completely diminish our egos that it will reveal itself to us.

* * *

We spent months at a time in each other's company, making mistakes and laughing at them, pushing each other to be better, wanting to be better around each other, sharing secrets and dreams, crying on each other's shoulder, being best friends, enemies, lovers... and then one day we peacefully parted ways. I don't want to ever go back, but I will always treasure it as one of those experiences that shaped me into who I am. I will always treasure the memory of him, and of the world he let me be part of, beautiful and miserable at once, filled with tragic past and high hopes for the future, but his world nevertheless. I took the best from it... and I moved on to build my own.

Image credit: *duchesse-2-Guermante

Collision

Words fell into their places as I started concentrating on social ties — things that drive us in the same direction, or away from each other, or toward one another until we collide.

When you look more into people, you start seeing more of yourself.

I think it takes a sync of minds to sooth a soul, but it often takes a collision of minds to spark an idea.

Why can’t we be as happy on our own as we are with others? I think part of it the unpredictability factor. We never know what the other person is really thinking or really feeling, or will do or say next. Maybe we can be happier with ourselves by being a bit more unpredictable.

P.S.: I was going through my notes from what seems like forever ago, and among loads of nonsense I found something that I thought I could post.

Image credit: er0k
Listening to Patience by Nas & Damian Marley

Lovers rock

A gentle screech of the gate tells me you are here, and only the dense shrubs entangled in the darkness of the garden separate us from each other’s arms.

Your face glows in the soft light of a single candle, your eyes are smiling, you carry some food in your hand. I can’t live another second without feeling the warmth of your embrace.

We have a little picnic on the floor, eating pizza, watching movies and staring at each other as if there were no tomorrow. Sadly, there was no tomorrow.

You get up and head across the room, putting on Sade and asking me for a dance. I laugh, but you are serious, you say. And so we dance the night away, and as you hold me tight, I know you truly are my lovers rock.

When I need to be rescued
And I need a place to swim
I have a rock to cling to in the storm
When no one can hear me calling
I have you I can sing to

I wake up in the middle of the night and see you next to me, wide awake, leaning on one elbow and looking me in the eyes. You are not sleeping? – I whisper. I just like watching you sleep, you say. Are you for real? I touch your cheek, give you a smile and drift back into my dreams.

I wake up many months later, in an empty bed thousands of miles away, and I still look for your hand next to mine, for your soft hair on my cheek. I still can’t believe I pushed you away from me, even though it was the only right thing to do. My strength has turned into my weakness.

I am trying to write this book of mine and every time I sit there in a complete silence, attempting to pour my thoughts out on paper, you slowly creep into my head. I try to kick you out, but those bittersweet memories have their way of coming back time after time.

Who am I kidding, your heart was never fully mine. We hurt other people while hurting each other. I never had the guts to tell you this and now I never will, but I am hoping to finally let it go by pouring it out onto a blank page. So here it goes, I loved you madly, even though it never was the right time for us.

And in all this
And in all my life

You are the lovers rock
The rock that I cling to
You're the one
The one I swim to in a storm
Like a lovers rock

Image credit: lanka_ultra
Listening to Sade

Confession

I see the rain, and a car full of people, and suppressed tears in the corners of my eyes. "You will come back," she whispers kindly, and deep in my heart, I know I will.

She jokes with me as she cuts your birthday cake, days after my return. We cheer to a great year ahead... a year full of surprises.

We share an unexpected work trip, some eight hours in a bus that feel like a lifetime. You tell me your breakup news and I share the pain of being cheated on. We visit the city slums and a local jail. It rains heavily and we are stuck in a shady eatery, talking for hours. The labyrinth of gardens leads us to an old coffee mill, plants growing on top of it. A kiss turns into laughter as a group of tourists walks into sight, observing us, not the mill.

How is she, I ask you a couple of days after the accident. "Why don't you check for yourself?" As I am waiting in line for the plane, I finally get the courage to do so. I hear her voice going weak as I make that morning phone call to the hospital. "I'm about to go into surgery," she says quietly, and although she's trying hard to suppress them, I can hear her tears.

I can't stop feeling resentment for my actions. I can't help but feel that even this physical pain she's enduring is somehow my fault.

Masking my heartache, I ask you to be with her. "She really needs you at such a time," I whisper. "I really need you at such a time," you reply stubbornly. I nod in disagreement.

I hear my phone beep one morning as I sit by the Nile, one week till I see you again, one week before there is no more 'us'.

"How I wish to be the one who completes you."

I put the phone aside and dip my feet in the water. No one here can see me cry.

Image credit: Elizabeth May

Unforget

In the backroads of my mind, where gravel meets the fallen leaves in a gentle touch, you are lost somewhere in between the windy sky and the earth, moist from the rainy yesterday. You are holding my hand in a sweet attempt to keep it warm. Who are you?

I know this is silly, a digitalized feeling of a sort, a quick note in my phone, one of many saved during countless traffic jams of Nairobi. I haven’t blogged for a while, and felt a strong urge to write something, anything. The job keeps me busy, too busy in fact to walk around the yard barefoot, or talk to the lonely dogs in our compound, or ever sip from that air of creativity that surrounds you once you let your mind loose for a minute, once you let go of the burdens of the day. I want to absorb Sunday mornings again. I promise to myself I will try doing nothing... this Sunday morning.

Image credit: GREYFading

Now you are out there livin’... in the deep.

We expect a lot from each other, and it’s in that expectation of perfection that our arguments are born. We don’t understand each other. We look at each other with that tired look of the world on our shoulders, mountains climbed behind, oceans to swim ahead.

We are so different that despite all outside efforts to combine us, we can never become one. Yet a string so strong holds us together, we find it hard to leave that kitchen we share. We use the place to cook ideas, but what happens when our passions boil out of proportion? Someone inevitably gets burnt.

We are human.

This work is full of conflicts. This place is full of conflicts. But more importantly, we are full of conflicts from within.

Life keeps tumbling your heart in circles
till you... Let go.
Till you shed your pride, and you climb to heaven,
and you throw yourself off.
Now you're out there spinning...
In the deep.

And that’s how it flows. That’s how we flow… until the better us are born.

Image credit: SendMeAngels

Waiting

I’ll come in August,
He declares
Each sound reflected
In a rain pool
Of endless summer

Words get trapped
In maze of thoughts
Blended with dreams
Diluted quickly
By the real

June’s proving busy
She reflects
Trying to mask
The notes of fear that July
Will last forever

Drops of moist
On fingertips
Tension within
Knowing that August ends too soon
And then?

Listening to Pretty Wings by Maxwell

OD

You give me an injection of care, a dose just big enough to last a day. But like any other drug, the one you are giving me can be unsafe. You give too much sometimes, deliberately or not; you overdose me. “You sleep babe. I arrived safe,” my phone is beeping through the wall of mosquito netting. I can’t sleep. My mind is high on you, and this overdose gives me cravings. I’m dreading the withdrawal that is looming from around the corner. I’d rather not have any, than have so much and lose it all. And then an old saying comes to mind. “Don’t think about it being over. Be happy while it lasts.”

Image credit: Eliara

How do you start a story that never ends

If only I could tell you the truth, I’d tell you how much I miss you. I’d tell you how much it hurts to suppress that thought. I’d tell you how my chest is about to explode all too often from the tension within. I’d tell you how I eat on the go and work late hours, till I pass out of fatigue, not allotting my mind a single free minute to think of us. I’d tell you how understanding of our work and the future we are trying to build, not for ourselves but for others, prevents me from ever letting myself anything but a quick gentle thought of you. It passes like a light breeze on a hot afternoon, that thought, tickling my forehead one minute, gone and forgotten under the unbearable sun a minute later.

I miss you, my friend. I don’t regret making the mistakes I have made. I don’t regret taking the path I have taken. You warned me it would be hard, and sometimes it drains me of ability to feel. But even in my weak moments, you insist on showing me the way. And so I keep walking. Never toward you, always side by side. Always toward the same goal that is so much bigger than us.

Image credit: m0thyyku

Homeless

My world is falling apart.

I am in a new place, surrounded by new people, but they are not taking bricks out of my walls. My world is falling apart for different reasons. I am surrounded by laughter and phone buzz and road bumps as I fly though the day, and this busyness is making me happy. It’s when my head touches the pillow and the thoughts of work finally slip away, one by one, that I feel the drops burning my cheeks. I feel lost. I feel taken advantage of. I feel lonely in this cheerful crowd. Those nights, I wonder if I can ever be truly happy. What’s wrong with me? Will I ever find a place where I belong, heart, body and soul? Will I ever again meet the people who’ll appreciate me for who I am; not what I can do, whom I know or what I have to give?

Dear home, can you help me find you?

Ms. Undecided

There are Mr.Tall & Mr. Cool. They are both tall and cool, but Mr. Tall is taller, and Mr. Cool is cooler. Sorry, I am having fun here. I guess I could say her heart is spit in two, but she’s not sure if any of this is deep all the way to the heart. Her mind said it was too busy to process new drama.

She misses Mr. Tall, thinking about him every now and then. He messed up (they all do sooner or later), but apparently not enough to cross out the good parts. He drops her a line every now and then to remind her of his existence. It’s interesting that he always drops her a line when she starts thinking about him. I guess saying there is a cosmic connection of some sort would equal to her believing in fairies. But it’s good to fool yourself sometimes; it makes for sweeter dreams at night, you know.

She is talking to Mr. Cool. He’s a master of masking emotions, so she practices that skill as well. She gave up a while ago trying to guess what he feels and why. He’s different, and she likes different. She doesn’t like being teased for no reason though. I don’t think he knows whether or not he has a good reason. There’s physical attraction, but anything beyond that is foggy. They are like two kids in a sandbox, building castles grain by grain, afraid to destroy the structure by throwing in too much sand at once.

Mr. Cool has no idea Mr. Tall can steal her from under his nose. Mr. Tall has no idea she saved a spot for him in the sandbox. Unless he gets the cosmic vibe too, which would be his pass to the weird club. But hey, she likes different.

Neither of them bothers me as much, however, as Ms. Undecided. And it’s not her ridiculous name that worries me. It’s her inability to live without the tall and the cool types in her life. It’s her failure to reinforce the foundation before building more unstable structures that look good today, but will crush her tomorrow. Dig deeper, Ms. Undecided. Dig inside of you to find what you are looking for.

Image credit: m0thyyku
Listening to Life is Real by Ayo

The great below

Sometimes memories come out of nowhere. In a pure world, certain ones would have been marked with guilt. In real life, there's often no sorry close enough to reach for. Then again, maybe it's better to stay pure of fake regrets.

A night like this pulls me out onto a dim porch, makes a spark in the darkness and points to the concrete jungle below. That's when the thoughts of him come knocking into my forehead. I don't know why and where they come from. I don't seek them, I swear. I don't want to lose the one I have in my life. I don't want to distance a close friend either. Sometimes I only have to picture the faces of those two to stop thinking these thoughts.

But there is something about him that I can not forget. It could be that contagious laughter at his own joke. It could be his sweet embrace. Or it could be the look that I felt on my cheek while deep into some random story, to turn around and meet his eyes. I still feel that look in a dream here and there, snuggling between our vibrant conversations or cutting into the silence that had no tension in it.

So is it OK to still have these thoughts every now and then? Sometimes I think, no, because the stakes are too high. And sometimes I think, yes, because I'm alive.

Image credit: kubica
Listening to Marley's Concrete Jungle

The clouds reflected in my eyes

The ripples run into the sun
And your smile blends with the clouds
that flutter by me
As I sit on the edge of a dream
What do I see? What do I see?

Why do I write so much when I'm sad, and so little when happy? Am I incapable of describing happiness? Am I afraid to spook it with clumsy words? Or am I too busy being happy, to write?

I saw a Russian movie the other day and this dialog got stuck in my head.

Katia: "I admire how you can always joke... I can't do that when I am sad."
Lena: "Are you ever sad? Aren't you the happy one?"
Katia: "So what, I am sad very often. See, happiness is a state; one moment it's there and the next one it's gone. So when it's there, you always expect it to disappear any moment, and that makes you sad."
Lena: "So... according to you, when there is no happiness, you can laugh all you want?"
Katia: "Well, when you have nothing to lose, why would you be sad?"
Lena: "That's an interesting way to look at it."

I think I feel Katia on this. I am holding on to that fragile emotion, trying not to blink, afraid that when I open my eyes again it won't be there. People notice it. He notices it. He says the clouds are reflected in my eyes, and I can't hide them by looking away. He shines along on the days I shine. What am so I afraid of? Why can't I trust him completely? Why can't I chase away the thought that all happiness is fleeting? I hope it's a matter of time... I hope one day I can run faster than those clouds, leaving them where they belong - in the past.

And here comes the morning sun
I wonder if my dream will really come
As I site on the edge of a dream
That's what I see! That's what I see!

Listening to Minnie Riperton's The Edge of a Dream

If I were a boy...

I would notice the tune we both like and tell her it would be our song

I would leave a note on her pillow to remind her she's special

I would find that one word to boost her confidence

I would give her my trust, her freedom

I would listen... always


I wouldn't be too proud to call her if I wanted to hear her voice

I wouldn't forget the things she's passionate about

I wouldn't hide my feelings if I had them

I wouldn't endanger her trust

I wouldn't hurt her intentionally... ever


Sometimes I wonder, is it asking too much? Or do they know us so little?

Listening to Beyonce

Where do you live, Peter?

“Second to the right, and straight on till morning… I'll teach you to jump on the wind's back, and away we go.”

I feel like Wendy right now. You are my Peter Pan, the boy who decided to never grow up. You make faces at me. “Do I look like a ghost?” I giggle and close my eyes, pretending to be scared. You plunge forward at once, trying to pull me after you, off the window overlooking this troubled world. Let’s take a flight, you say, and see where the wind takes us. Let’s see what beauty we can create. You have to trust me, you say. My hand will be here for you when you need it.

I hesitate with one foot floating in the air, another unable to let go of my safe haven. I would love to jump after you, my dreamer, but I am so afraid. What if one day you let go? Will I fall through the darkness, into the world unknown to me? Will I look around and see a crowd of strangers in whose eyes the reflection of war is still flickering? Will I make my way home, up that window, and cry myself to sleep until I have no tears left in me? Or will I stay and carry on the fragile work of peace we have started? Will I be strong enough to one day take that flight on my own?

But you already have, you say, rolling your eyes.

Never this far, I note, sticking out my tongue to taste the rain drops.

You will never grow up either, you say.

I take a deep breath and push the bricks away with the tips of my toes, falling upward.

In my heart, I know I can let go of your hand and do this on my own. But it would be so good to know that someone is there to lean on when I grow weary. After all, it’s not the Neverland we are heading to.


Image credit: Frixin