On Love

It's not an act,
an illusion,
a mere infatuation of youth
(to be snickered at later,
and how young we were).
It's not that I want to be the one to leave,
that my pride demands I own these terms,
make these rules.

Because I do  not.

It is that you have been with me for so many years and never faltered. Even in my grittiest slums I knew who you were, and you reminded me who I was when I couldn't remember, myself. It is that while nostalgia of the things we were is beautiful, it is not why I love you. Rather, I want only more years of new adventures, of new paths, of knowing you better still. It is that with you, I am me, and it seems I did not even know that person until we met. It is that the coffee tastes better in your presence, the air smells realer, the life makes more sense. It is that when I run, you remain.

I want to be near you, until we are out of things to teach each other. I want our parting to be one of satisfaction, of there was nothing more to give, of I cannot love you like that anymore and then I want to be done. I want my life to be indistinguishable from yours.

That is all.

On Sweat

The rain arrives at last, a great loud torrent, it beats the dusty land. The lilac leaves had begun to wilt, people's eyes looked glazed over by the heat. The rain arrives, but the tropical heat remains. The sun sets in fire, in tangerine, but the forecast says floods are yet to come. I had to leave the water, at last, the rain drops pelted the waves so I could not keep my eyes open, and then there was that bit about being in water during lightning. I can't remember what the thing was.

My neighbor across the street returns. He sits on the balcony and gazes into nothing. They light the apartment in a green glow. Perhaps vacation is over.

The only secret to success is working like mad and fighting like hell. After my shift, my body is exhausted, I nap, I sweat, I try to recover before another day begins again. The curse of the working class, to which I apparently aspired. There is no success to be had. But on our way home from the bar the other night we dove into the channel, swam quietly through dark, cool waters as the party continued in the old factory on the other shore. We considered crossing, stepping out naked and joining the party. It was warm enough. Who would have noticed? Instead I stood on the subway with dripping hair and stained lips. But I was happy.

Summer sinks in, despite my toil, despite my inability to squeeze the minutes out of each day, it reaches in to where I can not escape and swathes me in sticky, warm air. Lines of varying color begin to form on my skin. A swimsuit lies packed in my everyday bag.

We cannot think of our mortality, always.

1:17 a.m.

The apartment is empty again, one day she's booked the ticket and pretend vacation is over. You return to your normal habits, leave dishes in the sink, forget to enjoy the heat wave that spreads over the city like a welcome plague, disabling the citizens from anything but basking. One night I fell asleep at six p.m. and didn't get up until the alarm rang the next morning; my every muscle was tired. I closed my eyes and felt the weariness pulsate in me, vibrate through the cells and I didn't know one body part from another. Summer is glorious.

The job is beautiful but exhausting, reminds me what it keeps me from doing. Creative spark plugs lie scattered around the apartment, burnt up and to no good. I am not ready to succumb. Give up, give in. This is not what I'm meant to be doing. The clock ticks quickly, races against the speed of my heart beats. He says we have to meet up before I go, because when I return you'll be long gone and I didn't realize the goodbyes could come so soon.

My father calls in the middle of the night. I have painted scenarios of many deaths before I hear the message of his voice from inside a pocket seam. My eyes wide awake, I see it: We have this now. There is nothing else to count on.

I don't want to sleep, anymore.

To Get

He looks like your old roommate in Greenpoint, that summer in Brooklyn when the streets steamed, but he left with the girl with the curly hair and you wished your locks had that corkscrew in them. You tell people you are going, you fake it till you make it but isn't that the way you made it happen last time and maybe the time before that as well. It is how you always go. You never have a proper plan; maybe you land with your knees bleeding but hell if you don't brush your shoulders and walk that road after all.

The light returns to the island in the city, demure sunrise on the church at the top of the hill as you set your alarm and tell him to go home. You fear you missed the party, you fear you'll miss the morning, there is an ache in your belly after breakfast or sunshine, you can't tell the difference, but the curl in his hair makes you think there is summer left to be had. How quickly the days pass. Soon will come fall.

You will stand.

Vindö

There was a different scent in the air this week, in the bicycle commute to work. The streets empty, the city in vacation, the few faces at the office tan with spare moments spent in the sun but that wasn't it. I just felt it in my lungs one night; it's been decided. And all the Swedish summer sunshine in the world could not change my heart: it is time to go home. 

All I see are steaming streets cooling with oncoming September winds, are the return of fall Mondays and don't wear white after Labor Day, normalcy returns to the city. All I see are my dreams, long slumbering, begin to take shape. 

We sat on the veranda, slow July sunset stretching across the isles and basking the pines in peach glows and birdsong, a long day's swim behind us, the brackish water staining my locks with salt and steam. I repeated again how breathtaking, how near Heaven, this moment, the one before, the many to come, but inside I knew. I had decided. 

Come fall, and dark nights, come terrifying winter and hopeless despair, I will be long gone. Once decided, how true the sentences sound. I can't plan for that in September. I won't be here then. 

You think I only play pretend. 

The days count down. You wait and see. 

Regina

I'm the hero of this story

I don't need 

To be 

saved. 

102,2

It's the most beautiful weekend of the year. Bright sunlight from early dawn to late at night, warm breezes, glittering water. My newsfeed spills over with pictures of children with strawberries, feet on cliffs, barbecues and boats and a hundred friends gathered at last, while I lie writhing in fevered restlessness, unable to leave my bed. Days and nights swim into each other; I wake up with clothes clinging to my sweaty skin, only to fall asleep shivering just as the sun rises over the trees. I pull the blinds, close my browser, we make jokes but it isn't funny at all, summer slips through my fingers and I am powerless to grasp at it. I cannot even cross the apartment without feeling faint. My innards twist around themselves and wring every last ounce of energy out of me. I am too tired to read, too tired to write. There is no space for anxiety or great revolutions of the heart.

But in the still moments, when there is just enough rustle in the trees to cool the air that sweeps in my window, when there is just enough silence in the street outside that the feeble voice inside my head may be heard, despite the rushing sounds of dehydrated blood past my temples, then I see it so clear.

There is not much time, but there is no stress. There are many questions, but already so many answers. Come fall, it is time for me not to be here anymore. I long now. The darker evenings do not scare me so much. There is a place where the streets never sleep, where the buildings always glitter. There is a place where the darkness cannot reach me.

So I am not scared.

You Were Born

Stockholm was warm when I arrived, a gentle afternoon sun and I peeled the layers off my body, grateful for homecoming and summer and life. The subway was unusually quiet for rush hour, the city already sneaking into vacation mode and no one gets anything done at the office anyway. I hurried to the South Island, couldn't even stop to drop my bags, pick up presents. The elevator creaked quietly as it made its way down, lifted back up, I stood fidgeting at the door.

You were just waking up when I came in, scrunching your face and sneezing at the bright summer light. You have your father's face, but it's too soon to tell really; your tiny fingers crinkled around mine but you held fast. One could hold your body in the palm of one's hand, and somehow you still owned the entire room. The air lay warm, thick around us and we moved in quiet moves, slow, everything draped in velvet airs as stories unraveled. You took your time. It's so strange, and yet it's as if it were never any other way. I tried to leave your side, to lift my hand from the curve of your back as you snuggled against me on the couch but I couldn't. I tried to speak of trips and summers, tried to care about whatever I had seen and where I had been but your breaths lifted and sank and trembled in your tiny body and I forgot my train of thought. Your parents looked at you, their tired eyes filled with stars. You do not know it yet but you are a miracle.

You do not know it, yet. But from this day on, I will do anything it takes to make you.

GBG

The city remains. It is rainy as ever, the wind cold and unforgiving but the faces are kind. The dialect sings through the crowds and their unpretentious clothes. My grandmother retells the same stories, the only ones seared into her memory that remain now, and I smile before the punch line because I know it too well not to. My friends realize they have lived in this same apartment five years, and me six, and I don't know where the years went. Weren't we just climbing those stairs with boxes and were all so hung over. 

Coming to this city used to feel so much like coming home. Like regardless my lost wanderings, this was a place where I had placed my trust and could sleep soundly. I've conquered new cities since then, grown and learned and I sleep pretty good in the apartment at the top of the hill now, too, I long for it even. 

But it occurred to me on the tram yesterday, crossing the bridge and seeing the little working class harbor town spread quietly over the hills, that the more places I conquer, adore, make my home, the more homeless I am in the end. 

Home becomes a watered-down notion I no longer have any chance to own. I grasp at straws, lose my footing. Sleep a restless sleep and wake up lost.