Twilight

The days pass in a flurry, the nights in a wave of melancholy. Dawn arrives before we’ve picked up, the quiet city rests and does not sleep. We empty bottles of wine like summer is endless, and at the precipice of a solstice, is it not?

They speak as if you’re ever coming back. You forget you are ever somewhere else. 

Plan return tickets like your life was all your own.  

Som Du Är Mot Mig

Late nights on the South Island, didn’t he say he had to be home by ten and here we are closing out the bar. Run-on sentences melt into each other’s superlative affirmations, how much love fits into the months of our absence, how much there is to say in the few hours we have face to face. You write because you have to, he says, and his every breath explains the words you forgot you had. New York beats inside my pale wrists, this is a good reminder when I forget, there is a purpose bigger than my own. He writes from across the river and you think there is a home here, when I bleed I forget the peace that rests within those words, why must it be so hard? Life is complicated and simple all at once, you are an ordinary miracle at every turn, take it with you to sleep in this strange bed, the street is quiet but your skin is always yours, you are never entirely lost. Life cuts at your very gut, but aren’t you also somehow invincible?

There’s an alarm clock waiting underneath the pillow. I do not pull the shades. There’s no sense sleeping through all these things

just because they hurt.

Like I Was Alive

You promised you'd be there when I woke up, his quiet voice sifts through my jet lagged unconscious, as a little hand sits softly on my arm. I follow him back into a dark room of jungle animals, but while he is content, I lie awake, riddled with the questions of a life falling through my fingers. I sat on the subway later, watching all the people who look like me and feeling alien to their every sentiment, unsure what to make with the feeling. Taste a new language on your lips, it looks so good on paper, how you could take it home to meet your parents, how it could decorate your home and still your early morning ruminations, but I walk away in confusion. I want to tell you there is darkness here, there is nothing but shattered illusions and you'll cut yourself on my sharp tongue, there's a mire here that will drown you, get out now while you can, do not let my taste on your tongue fool you.

I am not good for decorating your home, I don't even know what home is. I bleed in these streets and will refuse your band aid, let me fall once and for all and be done with it. Perhaps this blood will look better in poetry.

Otherwise, what's the point?

See the Tree Tops

Days pass, evenings pass, it’s hard to tell them apart in the land of the midnight sun and you don’t try. I’m tired at odd hours or not at all, one night I sat under a heat lamp in the old neighborhood and watched a new face contour its edges into my memory; I guess I’ll see you around? but it’s anyone’s guess as to when and on which continent, such is life and I do not ask questions anymore. The walk home was oddly familiar, tipsy on a Monday and silently smiling, the old church along the way remembered my drunken stumbles and let me go. The air is colder here, I don’t think I’ll come back. It doesn’t hurt any more, but only for how much it already has. I am numb to the world, now. 

Come, try to break me anew. 

Probably

För man får inte tänka så.

Early morning on the South Island, June sunlight and everything is only beginning. Make my way west, a nation built around coffee culture and the refills are free, the sunshine is hard earned. A familiar face across the table, she beams and cries in the same breath, how life doesn’t stop to wait for you to catch up, and her belly grows through its heartache. I walked up to the top of the mountain later, with the city spreading out below and tourists navigating the narrow strait. It was home once, yes, it still sits in you like a cornerstone, like a sweet memory with the sharp edges scuffed off, life doesn’t give you anything pure, this brick was hard earned too: you do not have to let it go.

It still sits crooked in my gut, I do not quite recognize my reflection in its mirrors.

I do not have the answer to this riddle, yet.

Södermalm

The train rolls in to the south station on schedule, clean wide south station and a familiar face at the end of the platform. It’s been so long since you were here and yet no time at all has passed. Everything looks the same, but nothing is. Loss aches in you at every turn, the sun sets late over rhododendron bushes and you get another lilac bloom this season, aren't you lucky? We walked past my old apartment today and everything felt familiar, but past. The streets are quiet at night, the air cool.

I knew once what it was to know you. Now, I’m not so sure.

Transfer

Land in a fog, you sense the chill before you feel it on your skin. Is this summer? You drag warmer layers from your bags with a sigh. The language around you sings at a different timbre, it’s like a soft open to where you are going: a little kinder, a little happier, a little less a reminder of the ways you have left behind. As long as you are in transit, you are untouchable; as long as you are still attached to this ticket you can pretend that there aren’t unanswered questions in your gut, that you do not live every step of your life in fear that they will never be answered in full. Perhaps that’s all love is, then, a brief moment where we can believe there is no uncertainty, that there is objective truth. I was meant to be with you, that is all.

A gate is announced across the terminal. I gather my belongings, take a deep breath. Imagine the answer is love (is love, is love, is love, is love), and love is a ticket you carry with you always.