Sandman

I do not know the name of my sleeplessness. My one night of pleasant dreams played a trick on my mind. As now, I am back to the heat, to the wide eyed wonder, to the internal begging for exhaustion. I make my nest full, feather pillows under my neck, above my head, in my arms. My mother too goes to bed in a chair-nest, a reminiscence of our childhood concoctions, the love-seat her cliched sandman.

Although I try to exhaust myself by running, limiting the flow of coffee to my veins, there is a period in early dawn that I somehow cannot conquer. How uncharacteristic, that I entertain the notion that I do not fully control my fate.

Circles

When Julie arrived in Berlin, she brought music. She brought songs that would become the certain soundtracks of my immediate life. We sat at the bar beneath my house drinking hot toddies, on my couch in piles of chocolate and cheese. Everything seemed simple, but still ached inside.

It stuns me, looking back, that one of these artists was Sophie B. Hawkins, a hearty lady of my childhood blues. Somehow, she saw me through adolescence, and so in my post-poned teenagedom, she flashed her eyes again at me. Such circles we leave in, drawn by our very own toes.

Last night I dreamt of dancing. It was the first night that I did not wake breathless or in fear. It sounds dark, but it's honest. Though I was awoken, my heart was quiet, filled only with imagery of Brazil, sword-dancing and henna-covered hands. All was at peace, for a moment, the soft fur of my blanket warm against naked skin. I remembered what it was before, the soft of my cotton cocoon.

I suppose mourning is a process through which we encounter more and more of such moments, mere seconds of normalcy, impartial panting, soft sighing of our insides, too tired of being torn apart.

Candy Tunes

“Let’s make music.” Or is it magic that he spat, my head sat hard across his lap, the pink fluff of carpeted living like fairies of my eyes. Among the heat of Indian summer, sidling up to a childhood hardly lived, on that brink of adolescent laughing, he was my doll. I knew it wouldn’t be a love story, or one broken by the bells of passion, or one cried through the corded tears that only cold canteens contain; but still, in the weaving in and out of fingertips, in the morbid bellows of his eyes, I knew my own mortality. It was in fear, then, that I murmured my mistakes, that I lived longingly and largely, still forced to uncurl in the fat bubbles that always remain at the end. I saw clearly through, from the beginning, but still unfolded evenly like a grinning gambler’s hand of cards, a straight, perhaps, or a flush the color of park tulips, churned underneath our toes.

And still he played. With both me and in nightclubs, in city diners, in mall hallways, no places of his dreams. The raw reality could sit against our own, in its iced eternity, our promise, not hot but heavy as our pasts. I began to see that all love, like moons, like murmurs, like the cries of animals in vengeance or vein: all love is music, is caught in candy tunes. All love is martyred, is given in or given to or given up for other, bigger wants. As children do, I kicked my legs against this; I shattered things with hands and words; but I wished in the drying streams of my insides, in my veins aroused with air not blood, for our love, so far from embryonic, so fat and full of pasts, to kick back.

It had been years, I would yawn, decades almost and we were still like tickled twins. Sometimes, his voice would echo in my head as my own, or he would interrupt my sentences, a hurried guessing of robotic thoughts. Love, love, love I would sing to myself, safe inside our cotton cocoon, unknowing or unable, perhaps, to pick at the strings.

On Saturdays and Sundays, I worked in a downtown restaurant with a blue balcony and brandished name. By balancing plates and placating, by making mostly friends, I found distraction to help the hours pass; I found a velvet place of my own. I would think of him then too, but somehow separate, even when he would visit and extend small offerings that, gold and glass, glimmered back; I would accept the pink bags—brought back to that carpet we purchased on 171st street in a frantic fit of domesticity—and extend to him a kiss of the cheek. Always left with wet wonder, with the type of tears that rest restlessly in the outer corners of our eyes. It was the hours upon hours of standing, simulating, at times, the dancing of my mother’s toes; the red wine stains on diner mugs; a melting into the city I had previously, unrighteously, claimed mine. I found it healing, or more honestly, hallowing; it allowed me not to feel too hard, to paint my lips a purple-red and grin at the ghouls that inhibited our urbanity at night.

It was falling out of love. I remembered all the articles, the stories, the novels I read on falling in, not tripping but melting quicker than our city snows. I found it hurt more, however, to pull away; it involved bending backwards, tripping so many times that my knees resembled those of toddlers, cut from the mere storm of walking. I could not crawl even, in those winter months, when my inside beat harder than my brawn. When all smelled of him and the heat of wood, his silk skins a stolen sweater I had worn.

Here

I am here, where you belong, somehow transported to your space. But this embrace, dad, is bear, it bears no similarity to your own. Where are you now, closet smoker? Where are you hiding in these cracks too small to sneer? I am waiting. Waiting on the corner where you work to see your saunter; waiting by the Italian arc to hear my name.

I cannot leave without you. And so I sit here, implanted poorly in the world that is not mine, among your own, your art, my you. Missing you, dad, is marking it all as mine. Your phone in hand. Your computer pounding at my fingertips. Hoarding all that is left; the small of entities ascribed to you; the smell of closet up in arms.

I sit by the Venesian cafe where we sipped espresso and cream, chugged elderberry sodas when they were still somewhat foreign. I sit by the stoop where I arrived after school to announce myself and annunciate our closeness.

I sit here and wish back, want back, go back by closing my eyes just enough to blur the beings, the breaths around me. Even in spring, I hope for your snow.

Place

There is no perfect place, or space that speaks to all insides. But there are places, which in moments lie unmarked by mystery; that, serving emotion or experience, fit full with life. They are not always the expected areas, but life nooks, not neat but naughtily unique.

It is strange that upon returning home one of those very places constantly occupies my mind; and it is not a place in this city of mine. It is where wind chimes sat above lady faces, couches lay perpendicular to the sun, my books tampered and torn in my lap. It fits strangely now, as it was one of the hardest times, but raw in a way that I am missing, so hotly honest, so opposite of hollow. I would wake there in night sweats, position myself close to the fan, and then wake again at dawn in the grasping glow of morning.

When I think of it now I want back, I miss that summer smell, the roar of colors set in plaster and plastic on the walls. It reminds how we are made of memory and how mine, however set in shards, murmurs noisily with nostalgia.

Symmetry

I feel as if I pushed everything inside and then it was a mix of melting and mourning, wanting to somehow be alright with it all, what I would not have chosen before. I pulled into me all that was surrounding, whether right or wrong, to shield me from the rawest of it all: what lies in my head in sleep and waking hours, gnaws at my dreams. The strangest part, is that now it hurts more honestly but the relief is just as harsh; I can sleep through the night, I can let myself cry, and I can still want what I wanted before. I don't have to settle in any way. I don't have to hold on tight to what I know is not right for me.

I guess that pairs are not synonymous with symmetry. I can feel free and suddenly mourning what I have lost in my father; I can forgive myself for not always loving right, or who I should love, for having to try, make wrong decisions along the way, but in all of it still believing I will have what I have, at one time, known so well.

I am really proud of both of us for not settling for what is less, for what is cutting honesty, and for this maturity I have never before known. I am not even angry inside.

New York, on the other hand, is not a city of symmetry, itself; it is not a city that can be sidled up to. But it is a haven in the most hearty of sense. And finally, here, now, I don't feel so hollow; while it hurts, I'm whole, it's home.

What I am so afraid of is really the fear itself, because the most daunting but demanding decisions, those that we know the (difficult) answers to, are exhales to make, flattening of too-full lungs, a fancy unraveling of that which already lies at our feet. I have to laugh, when thinking, knowing that the decisions have long been made but unspoken, always in ice. Suddenly, it all seems symmetric. Not perfect, not easy, but far more fitting. And there is little more that I could ask for, that I want today. I feel almost guilty in the glutton of release.

Dragon Fire

I used to say that I was a young American woman of the rebel generation: a
liberal, one who has invested her heart in Western Europe's social
successes. In adolescence, I looked over the Atlantic with hazy eyes, a
young girl in love for the very first time, softening my thoughts when
considering that continent: not only of cobblestone streets, not only of
ancient castles and tongues, but of acceptance, inclusion, ethnic
understanding. There where the words of racism would not be spoken. In my
naiveté, I thought of it not as silence but of a thunder already come to
pass.

Growing up in New York City, I experienced the words, wonderings, walks of
many cultural groups. I witnessed multi-ethnic, multi-racial gatherings of
friends sipping cappuccinos on Broadway. I witnessed inter-cultural
kisses, marriages, children birthed and raised with utmost success.
However, I also witnessed the formation of social fault lines, which broke
open along what we call "race." I came to know those who were simply swept
inside the shattered earth of our spoken quake, our
discrimination—-segregated, excluded, omitted in both the public and
private spheres of minds. When glued back, these lines left
not only crooked societal scars but the remnants of men, women and
children torn by preconceptions, misconceptions, rhetoric that gave way to
the vile actions of countrymen, neighbours with bluer eyes.

This is why I loathed the words. This is why I believed they should not be
spoken. Without the proper vocabulary to hate, the rivers of the mouths of
those who sought to hate would fast run dry. They would choke on the
absence of the words upon which depravity depended. This linguistic
emptying would hollow them of their ability to act. Yet in my world, the
words—black, white, Asian, African American etc.—cluttered, hyphenated,
uttered not in whispers but booming orations, took center stage. They were
spoken by those who hated, by those who feared they could hate and by
those who hated the hate. Aloud, we believed they were normalcy: but I can
still today feel the hesitation of each heart that utters the words of
race, a Pinocchio nose within us both as individuals and a society that
spurts forward with each uttering of what does not exist. Thus
came forward my question, screamed in my ears by the graffiti streets of
Berlin: is it better to speak of, attempt to make real, that which is
biologically impossible or is it better to silence the words even if we
cannot silence the acts that those words breed?

I am more afraid of the nameless. I am more afraid of the words that
cannot be spoken. I am more afraid of those who say to me, in that city,
at once a great tombstone and womb of European history, that there is a
single race, the human race. I am afraid, because even with thousands of
African migrants, the Berliner politicians assure me that this is not a
topic of importance, it is not spoken of; they hush me not with words but
with their own hazy eyes. I am afraid, because refugees are housed among
extreme rightists without second thought. I am afraid, because integration
policies, set not in stone but in words on plastic pamphlets, seek to
quiet the cultures, to forcibly assimilate, make German ethnic and racial
groups. I am afraid of the ultimatum—become deutsch or accept ostracism. I
am afraid of the fires that burn beneath, rather than upon their tongues;
even lacking the dictations, they are dragons of such bigotry.

In the words of Toni Morrison, language alone protects us from the
scariness of things with no names. Although we have created cruelties with
our words in the United States, here in Germany they live and breathe too
without them. Until these parasitical norms can be spit forth
in the breath of murderers, martyrs, civil servants & civil society, their
worminess (burrowed inside mind and mentality) will hinder change. Europe,
just as the United States, has thus far failed in creating civic
nationalism. Here too, where east meets west, where walls of bipolarity
have been both built and torn down, lies deep racial and ethnic
discrimination.

We have lifted an iron curtain only to veil (rather than avail) the
continent in ghostly curtains of quietude. No matter what the distancing
of mouths from minds, only actions are authentic orators: they have spoken
and continue to speak. Why do we never think to silence steps taken? Why
do we think only to silence sour words? We have washed out the mouth of
post-war Germany—deportation cannot be uttered, race cannot be
whispered—but neither history nor the present can be cleansed with such
linguistic scouring. We cannot make a fairytale out of this castle-laden
land; the haze of the air fettering our eyes is not a marker of
enchantment but rather verbal renunciation. Instead of burning that which
may lie upon the dragons' tongues, we must bring forth from the womb of
history the unfortunate reality that lies in human hearts: coming
forward, bearing witness, to the truths that have been birthed with no
name.

Licorice Roots

Licorice Roots

I want to say, present yourself
See you streaking
In this sour cherry sorrow
If spiced, speckled pickling jars
Or jaundiced, juggled peppers
Are to blame

Blew fire in your heart

If I were to speak now in breeds
Draw out own rains
Yell your sad rendition of revolution
Still, I would be stifled by the smart soot of society
Pubescent parsonage of flamed companion

Your rhyme, rhythmic reason
Would sever the cigarettes I had hated back
The bluest of sewn crystal burrowed in your tongue
Schrewd seed of starved expedition
A bite
Your wet, woolen blink of the wind

In mourning, I too would wish wings
We all wish wings upon our dead
Not in entertaining heavens, hollowing heathens
But in access to an excess of age
Able to edge beyond owned ways
Trump black tears spit in battery
A lacquer licking as wounded as changed time

Such starvation from my licorice roots
Will linger, lie sweated but still
You, our blue-eyed beast
Tantric tale-teller
Will harbor your jalapeño strands
Your red beard never grown ghoulish, or gray

My smallest part will fall with you
Or follow you
My drenched Indian bear
Welled
With taught tears of adoration

I am certain you will mind her there
Wrap her in the rabbit furs of Russian dolls
Push back bent fringe from her eyes
Yawn in the evenings to ascertain
Such somersaulted love

Only you will level with the meaty moons
That will somehow grow her old alone
Without the wicked scent of smoke, or secret sweets
Only porcelain promise
Rather pickled, peppery
A touch of trying
To justify
To juggle life lost

Babylon

I am awake far before dawn; I know it is the early night in bed, broken by dreams of running or running out of what is most precious, the softest of time.

Walks to the kitchen are interspersed with first trips, bruised toes against arrangements that never were before, broken boxes, piles of possessions hard, harsh, in value hollow. I am unsure if I am home.

My mother and I cook pasta, sit at the wooden table with our legs crossed away from each other, too sad to let the silence sit, to sip slowly. Instead we push down drawn delicacies, we know not to loiter in these moments that, admittedly, are harsh, that hurt.

Sicily was beautiful, a Babylon of sorts. The winds were certain, the water curled around the island's belly, a blue changling as simple as my eyes. It was at once a relief and a reminder. I was overly pleased with the pizza, red wine, garlicky pasta and perched mountains. It was empty of tourists, cold for the beach.

The salt, the fishermen, the fried cannolis paired with cappuccinos, even in kisses they brought tears to my eyes.

Julie tells me to write it all down. The hurt, the love, the loss, the hope: what I want isolated but in actuality is intertwined in my every day.

It is as much about mornings as mourning. Like my mother, I wake in a daze, time spaced in shorter intervals, with the fallacy, the feeling that I can pull back at life's leash and have him here.

I dared Tom's with Tess, still full with fried fat and the bitterness of egg creams. The Hungarians, I hope for, but I am held back not by what is broken, but rather the needles of the unknown or uncertain, what is underneath it all.

Laughing at His Toes

My first chosen project was a journal, jotted alternatively with love notes and signatures of civil war. I lay below my emerald awning in the evenings (a dense Dorothy), entertainting, articulating, escaping inside to Lebanon. When I open my books today, they overflow with love, the littlest of notes and flat photographs begging the bored blue of his eyes. I know I chose because of him; and while embarassed, it was my youth, it was my doorway into this messy, bloody, broken world. My own edgy rabbit hole.

So here in the world of Alice, of unlikely love, I transfer myself back to such a sordid time, of tough tears for those I did not know, short shock of peppermint sweets, curdled sweats, the swollen crest of Kosovo in flight. I loved him them, suddenly, certainly and drew the lines of my life around his fierce, if wounded, frame. In him I solidified my passion, kicked up the dirt of his road with frozen toes, shook with tiny teacups in my palms, the spitting fire of boiled coffee and grand, if ghoulish, graffitied walls.

And then to Bosnia. Expecting, entertaining a future fled to in crumbled Sarajevo that crumbled crookedly and at cost.

Today, wandering still in this limitless loss, I am also building on love...if now legacy. I am engaging, making my way back to the world my father lighted, my father loved. In a way, I believe he is there, dsplaced, floating, fishing on his freckled back. Maybe he will find me in that south, because here he cannot be harkened. I hear only his hearty echo and his remorse at over-cooked meat. I see his pride, melting from his pores, a salted ham or sturdy sea bass laughing at his toes.

If I was in Oz or akin to magic queens; if I found a genie or was more of a superhero than adorned in Superman roos, I would grow no bigger or smaller; I would not ask for another heart.

I would wish him back.

And so for him I will go, meld my imagination and mystic in one; be mighty, if I must, but always un-whole. I will speak in his jagged drawl, just enough so that when I un-close my eyes I accept some part of this, however small, as mine. That I re-recognise hurt as healing, that I am again both helpless and hearty in loving. That I find my way back, if crookedly, if severely imperfect, to the same hard-footed child, to the flight of fairytales, to my father.