Another year of merda

   The end of this year feels heavier than the previous one - I have held a strong distaste for the holidays for the past few years, though I try to refrain from being superstitious about them. And in the past few years I take the time to reflect on what I have learnt, gained and lost in the year that passed. And the counting this year was painful and resembled pouring salt over wounds that remain unhealed. 

  In this year I felt the rug of what fragile little security I had built being pulled from under my feet. One of my most important relationships dissolved and I am still trying to balance the automatic-guilt with the fact I did not deserved to be treated like that. Another important relationship has all the trust I placed in it sucked right out. The sense of home I had tried to built was picked apart and now any room can feel like a home in the sense that if you decorate any hotel-room enough you can play-act it into being a haven. I came to realise that my bones are my only home, weary and heavy as they are and I quit believing in almost anything. 

  The last day of the year finds me home, looking out at a grey sky, feeling disconnected from everyone and slightly desolate for it. My attachment to people has become more discoloured than it was in the past and I allow myself to face this feeling without guilt.  May the next year be kinder. May we learn to give a shit and show that we give a shit.  

  May we learn. And grow.

  So that all the pain has been worth it.

  I expect nothing out of anything.

Entry #11

   Spending so much time deliberately looking inwards is bound to unearth various results. I have always had some sort of inclination of what kind of person I want to be and what sort of life I would like to lead but I was taught to always be careful and caring and nurturing and while those are all fine qualities to have, they can shatter a person when they are the main ones they have. And now at my age, in the midst of the pandemic, breaking my back at one shitty job after another, I realise I am not even top notch on these qualities either. 

  I find my self hungry and with a lack of any definite character or set of skills.

  The hunger has been one unexpected constant in my life and though I often find myself either detesting or pitying this emotion, I can do no more but to recognise its value as well. For every time I have dared to set a foot outside it has always been a move pushed by hunger. The trap however, is that the more you start to open up, the more starts pouring out. And the more that starts to pour out of you, the deeper you can look within and there always more skeletons to drag out of the closet, more things you want to learn and reach out to.

  In some ways, I am hungry for myself - for a sense of self that feels like me and not a man-suit that I am wearing. I am hungry to be exposed or rather to expose myself, to open up to touch that I can monitor in some ways, rather than feel that I am always subjected to the caprices of life without a will of my own. I am not talking about "rebranding", such fancy, almost filthy word, no, indeed, I do not refer to rebranding myself. I am not searching for a brand or a label, even though all my life I have been taught to chase after exactly that. A label. In greek we say that it's better to have your eye gouged out than have a bad label stuck on you.

  But I have found that all the good labels can feel like hot iron set on your skin too. And you end up scarred and just as empty on the inside. 

  I feel the pressure - in fact I feel it all too well. The pressure to be defined in a very clear, objective way - and I often desire to have the ability to do so but I find myself entirely incapable of doing it. And, for lack of better words, there is something that begins to kick inside me too. I have felt the kicks for years now but the more time passes, the more acute becomes the pain of every hit, the harder it is to be ignored.

  All the story tropes reside deep within. 

Entry #10

   I always told myself I spent too much time in front of the screen and that is true but this year it seems took it to another level. All of a sudden I am called to spend an innumerable amount of hours and now there is more work, more research to do - and often more amusement to look for. 

  It is also the first time where I am confined to the screen for communication. The first time that I have been called to not only retain but also grow relationships confined to the screen. I have met the other through media in the past and with some we have only had communication like this but this is different - this is now for the first time the main thing. 

  It makes me more nervous than I care to admit. I have often felt unease when called upon interacting with others and now this cutting off from reality is perhaps changing me even further. On one hand I feel like I am growing more on the inside, like every thought and action become deeper, obtains a different hue. On the other I feel like I have grown more sensitive and callous at the same time, my tolerance for the physical presence of others - and therefore the inability to shut them off whenever I feel like it - becoming shorter and shorter. 

  There is no normality to go back to. At present more and more of us are snuffed out, some out luck or lack of circumstances. I feel like we are laid bare and we still refuse to see - I include myself in all of this of course. And those that resurface, whenever they do, what kind of people will they be afterwards? What kind of connections will we form?

Anonymous and traceable

 I have traces of me 

scattered around the web.

Some of them nameless

others not.

I have scattered pieces of me

some abandoned

others not. 

I crave the times

when being unknown was

an easy kind of trick. 

Now I feel like pouring all my brain 

into even smaller

nameless 

little parts.

As much as praise

and recognition fuel me

they also set my surroundings on fire.

They poison 

every thing

that I tried to keep pure

for myself.

Creating

and living

and thinking. 

As much as I don't like to admit it

I fell prey 

to the same

(day in)

(day out)

trap 

as most of us.

Sometimes I wonder

just what kind of person I would be

if the opinions of others didn't matter.

I am deeply grateful for all the small little tidbits of private expression that I still have. I used to be paranoid about the blog, concealing it and not talking about it and hiding it from search engines. I have let go in part of that, over the years I have shown it to one, maybe two people.

And I am grateful for all it is. A private little space, where I can write silly little words and I don't have to worry too much if it's not good enough or not.

Entry #9

   Someone I knew died recently - he passed away noiselessly in early October and it was not until recently that word of his death spread quite like fire from mouth to mouth. Or, to be more exact, from screen to screen. In a year full of ups and downs, heading from one small disaster to a new one, this one death shocked and shattered the quietness of quarantine. 

  I thankfully spend the second quarantine by myself, in complete isolation using the excuse of empty days to empty my mind and balance whatever there is left of it after a roller coaster of a year. A lot of things remain unprocessed and I do wonder not just when the world will go into some sort of balance but also how long it will take for each community and individual to do so as well. In a state of collective trauma that varies in levels, reality is sometimes difficult to stay in touch with. 

  And that is exactly how I have been experiencing life lately: in a state of disassociation as if most components are not real, as if we have entered a parenthesis that at the end of we will be able to go back to our lives as we knew them from before, except not all components of our past will be there. And this crisis has pointed out all the many ways in which our previous reality was fragile at best.

  But I digress. On a quiet evening in Athens, looking at the building from across the street at the opposite apartment, death slid quietly in my DMs. For the first time I realized that there is no normality to go back to. For once everything opens back up, whenever that happens, whenever we can hug friends and acquaintances that we see on the street without wondering whether or not we have exposed each other irrevocably to harm, we won't go back to life as we knew it for that life will no longer be there. Going back to our favorite places, the bars and schools we frequented, we will realize that stepping out of our house will also feel like stepping in a photograph with holes in it. 

  We will go back, maybe, but not all of us. 

  And it makes you wonder, who will I go back to? How long and what quality of time do I have left with people I love? How have I been using it? How will I use it? Time feels more and more elastic but more often than not it's as if we're experiencing it on the verge of breaking. We feel the cracks around us seem to thicken, how do we grasp life truly back? 

  I struggle for the answers.

  I have not found one. 

  I hope you found the peace you craved in whatever you went. 

Entry #8

  I was not aware that the closing of a door could have such a finite feel to it. And yet looking back all the ends almost always include the closing of a door; the door of the airplane as it shuts closed, the door of your previous house closing after you have handed in the keys, a taxi door, a class-room door. Sometime the sound of the door does not accompany the ending itself, it is only later, when you return to your current adobe and you close the door behind you that you even become aware of an ending. And more often than not, those moments are hardly melodramatic.

  When he left I closed the door behind him in relief. It does not bug me in the slightest to admit so. This was an ending to our chemistry, the thing that had been building up under the surface and had to be released at some point. And once that door closed he was back to being himself, another man, in a way a boy, in many ways lonely. I have tenderness for the lonely people but I do not delude myself with what is an extent of a need and what can be rooted in genuine emotion. And I felt relief for once the line is crossed and you see what was on the other side you can comfortably go back and move on.

  When I closed the door behind me that day, I looked around at was my new house and could not help but think back of another house into which I had entered with a feeling of elation, with so much positive feelings for what the future would hold. This now, this was a different matter, a different feeling. It was the first time I moved in someplace feeling near sick to my core, disillusioned, tired and wishing to be away from every one. I still think of those moments with a bitter feeling, sometimes the bitterness is directed to myself.

  When I came back last night and closed the door, knowing that in the next three weeks I will be in complete quiet, with very, very disturbances from the outside world, I was filled with bliss. Things are never allowed to be quite so simple, of that I know. But the bliss was there none the less. The present situation removed any need for a pretext, for a reason to sit back and remain reserved and keep my mouth shut. And with that I drew in a deep breath.

  And I allowed myself to plunge inwards.

Entry #7

 On Sunday mornings, I almost feel myself again. I woke up surprisingly early, surprisingly with ease this morning. I made coffee and cleaned the house, I took down most of the winter clothes and re-arranged my wardrobe. Yesterday the chest pain didn't go away until I lied down to sleep, yet I drifted fast and deep. I woke up feeling more like myself, part of the anxiety melted away with the night. I know my job is slowly sipping the life out of me and I know it's unlikely that it will get better. I know that the anxiety will have me back by the throat once tomorrow rolls around and I cursed for not noticing sooner that I am running out of my melatonin pills; since I started taking them, I sleep better on most nights.

  I ate breakfast, then lunch around noon. I have left the covers outside in the sun to be aired. I ate with friends twice this week and this gave me joy. I like having people over and feeding them. There's something about sharing things you made with people that is full-filling. I sat on my arm-chair by the balcony doors, this chair that I have come to love so much, and read. In some ways, in my head, I have created in this weak even though my soul was bleak. On the hours when I fall, I fall hard. And then I get back up by myself, stumbling along the way. I struggle to find peace, yet I recognise it at once when I come across it.

  There's only peace in learning and in standing still. In staying in quiet places, sometimes sunny and sometimes not. There's peace in grievances shared with people who won't judge you for not being well, in the moments when you can speak of your pains without having to be told what you already know, that things could be worse, indeed they could, but that does not make many things better. 

  I hear the rustling of the leaves and I know, that as time goes by the ties I have with this place are being severed one at a time. I am shedding the person I used to be. 

Entry #6

   Finding a way though the rumble is difficult - perhaps it would not be so if my own mind was not so filled up with rumble itself. But so it is and through all the debris I try to locate what pieces are still there left to picked up, though I have to admit that whenever I do come across one I spend quite some time pondering over it. wondering whether it's worth the effort to pick it up or if it's preferable to stay without it, even if I remain "incomplete". 

  In the mornings I manage these days to wake up somewhat more easily, even if the nights are heavy. I have positioned my mattress near the window so that when the sun rises its light washes over me. When I get up I drink some water, then pick up the bedcovers and put them out on the clothing lines so they hang over the balcony in the sun. I sit down to read some times, depends on how long I have before I need to rush to work or prepare food or something similar. I put music on, I use my cds so that the computer will remain off. I try to study and to stretch. I try to think my thoughts but not follow them down slippery paths and to reach out a little bit to the people I care about. I am trying to take away things from my house again - slowly but certainty the space is beginning to fill up and it is causing me to feel distaste, the mere thought of having to pack all of them next time I leave is giving me a headache. At the same time, I kind of enjoy having this space - some days it feels more like my home. 

  It's a bit easier to control and understand my mind on the days that my phone and computer stay off longer - it does mean I am getting even lousier at answering messages but at the same time I feel less miserable and can concentrate somewhat better. It becomes easier to put order in things, to find time for a book, for creation. It also means I am left to face myself more; but in truth I do not know how to manage all this pain and anger that I see before me. The anger is mostly directed to myself, for the times that I let down others and also me, for the times I turned a blind eye to what was happening instead of standing my ground, for the times that I believed staying quiet could ever be my saving grace. I shift through all the pieces and wonder what could I have done differently. I look in the mirror and wonder whether I like the person that I have now become.

  I grew bitter and harsh over the course of the spring and summer. My mother's eyes are full of alarm, I managed to water down my tiredness in the past couple of months but whenever things quiet down, I feel it rising it back towards the surface. I used to fight it back towards the bottom but the older I grow, the less energy and desire to do so I find. Perhaps that is a good thing: a way to mentally declutter, internalising how I try to treat the space around me.

  As the days become shorter and the cold of the oncoming winter arrives slowly but surely, I find small moments of personal blossoming. Perhaps all this bitterness, in time, can turn into a kind of resilience. It is hard to believe and to have hope, so I don't, but in a pragmatic way I try not to refuse the possibilities.

Entry #5

  I wrote a long entry and erased it. For in reality it wrote of nothing, it listed of things and things and things and really, some things don't matter all the time. I don't know in what words I could express my emotional state - I decided to try some new things out, picked up some classes, asked someone to come over, small steps towards learning how to express desire and needs in a form that is not shaped by the wishes of others. The excitement of those small steps, the fake decisiveness of them somehow balance out the rest of the bad stuff. Perhaps I am learning in some ways how to be more myself.

 I am trying to grow into a morning person - in truth I have never held anything against mornings, except for the fact that they were usually required for the sake of the dictates of others and that the night has always had it's own allure and quiet in it. Somehow the  poetry of life seems to have dried up by 8a.m. Nonetheless, this year the nights have grown more difficult and peace is hard to find in them. At least lately I can sleep more easily but sometimes I need to know that I will sleep next to someone else once a week. I don't bother with more than that, the shared intimacy with a trusted person is enough to anchor me down a bit, to calm the fears that sometimes assail me in the dead of night. 

  And this year has turned out so weird - aside from the sexual contact, I was so used to share physical contact with some people in my life. Now I hardly embrace my parents, I hardly see friends, let alone touch them, occasionally I meet people by chance while coming back from work and there is that moment of silence when we're both thinking whether we should hug or if that will break through too  many barriers of the other person. All this physical disconnection, mixed with the cracks and rifts that bloomed this year, they have left me so bereft, so lacking, that the mere fact of sleeping next to someone once per week helps balance me out. I know that part of me wants to chase after the chance of adding more nights or risking adding more bodies to the nights just in case the warmth will bring more quietness with it but I know well enough that that is not how it goes. Trust of others will slowly be built but in the meantime, endlessly filling up what little space I have to myself with non-sensible distractions is pointless. Still, I'm thinking about daring it here and there. Even if only for the temporary relief.

  So many little dares for some temporary relief.

Entry #4

 I am often thinking about the way I express myself on this blog - as with every little thing that I use for self-expression, I am hopelessly analyzing whether I am doing things the right way. The proper way, to be exact. I used to write everything in broken, disjointed lyrics, trying to give a sense of flow to the written word that would soothe my mind a bit. And I love writing that way still, except that these days I need to write longer sentences, endless paragraphs. It might be because I have grown more quiet, it might be that I have for a long time now been too quiet and now everything is coming out in waves of words that in total might amount to very little for anyone else but to the present me they feel like part of the solution.

  Healing is a slow process. The reconstruction of bones is more painful than I would like to admit and I want to rebel against that pain and go back to hibernation. I am not sure I can afford to though. I spend most of my time in my head and through all the writing that I have been doing in the past few months and year I have managed to notice some patterns - would it that that would suffice. But alas, even clarity comes in waves and though some problems become clear one day, their cause might be gone back to obscurity the next.

  I have found during this time that I am more obstinate in my misery that I thought. I have always perceived myself as a person who lacked any significant backbone but the way I end up going in circles that I know are bad, the way I refuse to voice my needs, they must be also a true sign of stubbornness. I grasp on this refusal with claws and teeth, holding on to it in hopes of shaping it into something more beneficial. I try to use the anger and the despair as fuel to help me move forward, to break through.

  Like I said, healing is a slow, imperfect process. Sometimes it's expressed in asking someone to come over for pizza, even though you're afraid that they will be too bored and say no. It's being able to steal some sleep while the body of an infrequent lover lies beside you and wake up and realize you're more well-rested than all the times you slept longer but alone. It's realizing you're able to sleep next to a lover again and spending the morning basking in their warmth, their soft caresses. It's accepting that it's ok for two weary, lonely to share intimacy even if they're not in love, even if it's not forever. It's allowing yourself to cry when alone when the other option is to never cry at all. It's not smoking for two months straight even though you really want to because you decided you should poison yourself less. It's struggling to find a way out of your retail job.

  I did not find much peace in my escape with nature, as I was hardly left alone. In spite of that, there were moments, quite a few of them in fact, where my insides found a harmony, a balance. I particularly remember sitting at the foot of the rocky cliffs, my feet digging into the sand, staring at the waves, taking in the vast openness of the sea, breathing the salty air, thinking of every little thing and then slowly, everything fading. Washed away, or maybe eroded by the salt. When I was a kid, the moment I got my knees scraped or a cut, I was instructed to run to the sea and drench my wound, for the sea would purify it and make it heal faster. The more the years pass, the more the wounds differ from those I carried as a kid, yet the sea seems to purify these ones too.

  Looking out at the sea, I thought of nothing, I chased after nothing, I was simply there.

  This morning I woke with a slight chill on my skin, the sunlight piercing through the curtains and aiming straight from my eyes. His presence next to me was like an anchor to the presence. Even in his sleep, if he was not pressed against me then his limbs would be outstretched, so that we were always connected. Small carresses, intimacies, I rubbed my nose and lips against his skin, luxuriating in the contact. I was, in a different way, present, thinking of nothing, focusing on the privilege of touch. I laid down earlier and realized that his smell has lingered on the pillow.

  And in the turbulent days that consist this year for every one, in the process of trying to dress wounds that I had thought had turned into scars but instead have been left bleeding, that is a small consolation. One that is all but insignificant.

Entry #3

 I have moved to this new home fairly recently. The walls are not as empty as they were in the first month and slowly the space is becoming more and more easy to use for my own needs but whenever I am outside of it I find myself dreaming of the moment I will leave it. The thought surprises me; I know I did not move in the best of psychological states and that I felt - and still do - forced to do so by the circumstances. But I am not blind. I can see that when within these walls I can breathe more freely than I have done in a while, I have seen some healing effects already. The willingness to create is slowly finding its way to the tips of my fingers enough, even on days when work has crushed me, even when sleep has repeatedly evaded me. I feel perplexed towards the eagerness to go and finally I have reached the conclusion that perhaps it's not the house - for the house feels like a haven, welcoming amidst all the noise and the chaos. A part of this emotion is the resistance to heal, for one can grow tired of healing, sometimes the tiredness is so familiar that it's easier to manage, and perhaps it's just that this city is finally kicking me out. I wonder sometimes whether it's the city life in general. 

  I often get into arguments with people over my headphones - I never buy expensive ones for I know that they moment they break I will immediately buy new ones for I can hardly step out of my home without them. The city has become too difficult over the year to tread around without the aid of music. The constant optical and hearing assault has proved to overwhelming and the headphones have been the only thing that has helped. They say, don't walk around listening to music for you hear no thing but the truth is that without the beat, ringing in my ears, bringing me back from sleep, I can hardly keep track of what is going around.Outside of the city border it is not so. The sounds there are more discreet and I am glad for them, relieved in their harmony. 

  I will get out of the city for a couple of days, back in the nature, I have an opened bag on the floor, trying to figure out what to place in. Except for a few changes I mostly want to bring notebooks and books, different pens, maybe another camera. I wonder if there's much of a point in bringing a camera, often the mere sight of it makes me feels guilty. This used to make me feel good I think. 

  Now photographs make me sad, like they enhance the outline of every piece that has been cut off from my life.

  The pictures of others serve as evidence, but evidence of what I know not. Their happiness, or perhaps the fact that there is not place cut out for the person I am presently in those pictures. I don't much care about the past me. But I do care about these photographs, more than I care about. I care about the fact that I am not in them and that I have become so superstitious against them.

  So I am battling against this superstition the only way I know how to: by running right at it. Slamming my body against its body until one or both of us break. I feel a near desperation at the thought of touching all the things that made me feel alive in the past and the camera is one of them. I need it in ways I never figured out in the past and that I don't care to explain in the future. Sometimes realizing that something turns you into a better version of yourself is enough justification.

  I will take then, at least for these few days, the different parts of me that used to make me feel better and carry them out of the city, among the pine-trees, sitting down and letting their scent envelop me any chance I get without the disturbance of people. I will try to concentrate this feeling, extract it into something precious, something to keep me going in the coming days, for I know many of them will be hard, cruel like the month of April in spring, bitter while pretending to be sweet and then stopping even pretending. 

Entry #2

  People keep asking you at any given point of your life, every day, "How are you?" as if that were a question they really wanted answered. I am guilty as charged of course and yet the question makes me cringe both when it is directed at me as well as others; there are times when I am tempted to tell the truth and there are times when I lie for the relief that at least there is one thing that I can control and that is just how deep the other person can perceive the shapeless thing that my life is lately - lately meaning the last eight years of my life or so. There are times when I am very attentive to every word directed towards me in case the other person actually discloses a grain of truth in their answer as to their well being. I am always trembling inwardly during those moments, dreading that grain of truth, fearing that perhaps their answer will hit so close to home that it will bring spontaneous tears to my eyes and that I won't be able to hold them back for the sake of the savoir vivre.

  It feels weird to bump into another part of yourself that has hardened more than you expected every so often. I lie down on the wooden floor, lately I have been able to enjoy music again, not always but more often than the previous months and I go through my CDs or the online collections until I find a tune that feels right at the time. I put it on and lie down and stare at the ceiling while the city sounds drift in from the open balcony door along with the scent of the incense I have burning to warn away the mosquitoes. I am trying to find some way back to things that used to cause relief. I actually try to make the house feel more like a private space rather than another place I regard like a rented hotel room - I know that eventually I will leave this one too but somehow it feels almost sacrilegious to not try to claim it as mine in the meantime, as if I am not honoring the protection it gives me from the outside world. I clean it almost methodically, on auto-pilot, I have filled it with plants, I repair things inside and small wounds, I put up things on the wall that make it feel warmer. Occasionally I have even had people over, always one person at a time with the exception of one birthday surprise that I agreed to have here. It felt good to have people over, to share food and chai and pains and memories and dreams - their dreams to be exact, I have not had dreams lately. Sometimes when I sleep I see some but when awake I don't dream of any one thing in particular except for the road. 

  This month some things have come to me more easily in spite of the fatigue - I write almost every day, I try to stretch my limbs and that has helped with the physical pain. The writing helps only in that other things I generally enjoy escape me still, perhaps not forgiving me for having neglected them for so long, and yet writing can provide some relief. Talking is another chapter entirely -  my job demands that I use my voice so much that outside of it I try to forget it even exists at all unless if I feel that what I words I will spew can somehow make me lighter. I have had some long and interesting conversations lately and they have aided me in my fight to soften the edges in me that are hardening uncontrollably. 

  A friend of mine asked me recently "And what is so foul about it, that you should lean against someone else's shoulder even if you're not in love with them, even if one of you ends up feeling more strongly, even if both of you end up hurt?" And indeed, why do I have to be so gallant, so unforgiving in admitting to be hungry? I shared my bed one night and though I did not sleep deeply, it was the most nourishing sleep I have had in a while. I felt relief in the warmth, the proximity of his body, in the fact that he chose to spend that night with me instead of his friend. I felt grateful to have a tender person lying next to me, to be allowed to touch him, to push aside for a while the guilt of seeking that permission with such hunger, such need, the way one seeks a painkiller when nothing else has managed to provide relief. Part of me wanted nothing more than to apologize and cry, like a kid that expects to be punished for something that is not even a punishable act, but instead I allowed myself to relax in the feeling that time slowed in his closeness, in his tenderness, that I felt happy and content. 

  I have been thinking a lot about that night and the one we had previously shared and the other ones we did in the past year, two lonely people giving relief to each other's wounds. And how it's the most lasting form of relationship I have had with any person that I was also sexually involved. And in truth it has helped immensely, both with feeling less lonely and also less dysfunctional. In feeling chosen and heard by a person that is not in love with me but has showed more care than people who claimed they were.

  He's trying to quit smoking now and I have managed to not smoke for over a month and wish him all the luck. When I am home and I suddenly feel a deep need to smoke I focus on the ink-stains on the floor - I had assumed they would wash off when I cleaned them but by the time I did so the pigment has seeped into the wood and so they remain there tracing some movement. I am slowly getting used to staring at those ink-stains instead of smoking, I can sometimes almost trick myself into thinking that they distract me from whatever occupies my head enough that I no longer feel the need to smoke until my lungs feel poisoned enough that my thoughts focus on something else. Sometimes I pick up different things, soap, alcohol, anything that might prove strong enough to clean them up, as an act of thanks.

  It may all sound kind of bad but in truth, the mornings are not terrible even though it's hard to get up, the sun fills up the room as if trying to nudge me forward to another day that I am occasionally willing to face. Life has grown quieter, the disappointment and anger do not always poison me. Sometimes I talk with people to whom I tell the truth. Sometimes I laugh loudly and have food that is tasty makes me feel grateful. Some simple things have taken a new character, I am reminding myself how to be alone in a healthy way, I accept that usually life is unhealthy. I dream of the mountains, of fresh ricotta with pomegranate jam, of olive trees, fresh herbs, a storm that is loud enough to cover every other sound. I said I no longer dream but I guiding my self back to it through sensations, I am beginning to dream of sensations. 

  When I was small, time had no meaning, no substance or existence, days and nights blended one into another. I always thought it was the same thing as with the difference or perspective in distances and sizes, how everything looks closer and smaller as we grow but I realized that those two are not connected in that manner. It's just that as a kid, I used to live in the present and dream of the past and the future, whereas now I live in the past and future and dream of the present. Every moment that I break out of the reverie has the taste of a tiny, private miracle.

Entry #1

  I try to think of simpler times but the truth is I can not. Perhaps it's because of the merciless heat that drains even the nights from the simplicity of sleep; after all, the more tired I grow, the more disoriented I become. I seek to find a quiet refuge amidst all the concrete of the city. Having not a pair of arms waiting for me upon return and no person that I instinctively look out for, I try to run back to the solitude of my house as fast as possible. It is only during the early hours of the morning or very late at night that the streets feel welcoming and full of comfort. During those hours you can almost let the city lie to you that life and humans are not so cruel. But during the day every painful little detail stares at you with unflinching clarity. The knowledge of some personal luck somehow does not make up for all cracks you see around you.

  Home sometimes offers an illusion, when in solitude time becomes slower, all you have to do is disconnect every device and suddenly the link with reality is severed, you can breathe for a while and pretend and act as if you're lonely so little that when you're alone you're merely gaining your energy back. Because even the people that used to be familiar, now their presence makes you lonely too. 

  Lately, when at home I have the tendency to turn off the music. I can remember a time when I couldn't sleep without music and now I often catch myself regarding music as more noise. It is amazing what a few years can do to you. Music has turned into something that I can no longer process. I find myself looking into different kind of speakers that I could buy for the house, I have wanted to get some for some time now but somehow the opportunity never arose or I was just too distracted spending my time otherwise. But now that listening to music has turned into this sporadic, almost esoteric, experience I feel I ought to at the very least do my part towards it. 

  At the same time, my headphones broke, the brand new ones and the first mildly expensive that I have bought in recent years and I find myself at a loss - though when alone I hardly listen to any music anymore, when I am on the street it is near impossible to go anywhere without music accompanying me. Somehow all the visual noise of the city becomes overwhelming when the added layer of its noise is added and my steps always falter a bit more when there is no music to cover it, walking to or across or just standing in place turns into a challenge. Music is kind of like the sea: it can both drown you and carry you along. In the past music was my main metric to measuring time; perhaps that is why I really stopped listening to it whenever I am alone: to stop counting minute after empty minute.

  I try to learn to enjoy all the empty moments that come my way lately. It's a formidable task for emptiness of action means there much space left for thinking and I can never tell for sure when my brain turns into poison. I have nonetheless chosen not to shy away from it and all this introspection might actually blossom into something, perhaps even gift us with some fruits that will most likely turn out to be more questions. New things have emerged in general, sometimes thoughts and realizations come to us with the guise of guilt.

  I realized I wanted to tell you that I am sorry. I think you made the right decision, though I'm not sure whether anyone ever truly, consciously chooses to fade out, I don't know if it were a concrete decision on your part of if you just let it happen, I remember when I decided that it was time to let you though. I remember when I decided I'd throw another stone down the quiet well hoping that this time I would year the impact with the water or the bottom. I was sitting in the hospital, that awful smell filling the rooms and corridors, I had to consciously refrain from sniffing my clothes to make sure that it didn't get absorbed on the thin fabric or worse by my skin. The smell did not stick around but all the memories rushed back, of other corridors and rooms, other hospitals, other years, other person lying on the bed. I was so hungry for you at that moment, I tried to replay in my head your laugh and to reconstruct by memory your eyes. I wanted for our existences to be side-by-side for a moment and I reached out and your response was honest in a way: the tone felt vaguely friendly but I could tell you were not there. And that was the moment that I let you.

  All summers have been weird and difficult in the past few years, each one of them breaks me differently. I don't mind the cracks. This one is disappointing as well but somehow it does not hurt me, July and August have given me so much space all of a sudden, space from everything and everyone that I almost feel at peace. It's just that this summer is loaded with your presence, there are so many things that I wish I could show you. Silly, small,  insignificant things. I hadn't expected you to stick around but I was hoping that somehow perhaps this time we would choose each other and work it out. And now I have this space and I would like to show it to you. I was thinking by the way, how nice it would be to drag a small mattress out in the balcony and pass out from the oppressive heat over there. The homemade lemonade would grow warm in the glasses next to the mattress, a small plate with olives and figs nearby. It is summer.

  At noon the cicadas start their chorus, in the yard bellow you can hear the voices of the children until late at night.

New man, new smell

I slept with a new man
just yesterday.
No.
I fucked a new man
just yesterday.
I was barely able to sleep
next to him
as always
with most men.

It always catches me
by surprise
when I drift off
next to another
sleeping body.
It doesn't happen often
and you see
it is the preciousness
of those rare things
that turn them
into glorified
trap-holes.

I felt his smell linger
on my skin
no matter how thoroughly
I washed
after.
It made my nose wrinkle
in disdain.
I dislike
the men of convenience
taking more space
than they're
allowed.

Presents

I threw away your underwear
the other day.
It was a white pair of boxers
with blue motifs on it
and when I commented upon them
you just shrugged
and handed them over.

I took out the bag of your
birthday
presents
just yesterday.
A collection of mundane stuff,
stuff meant to make you laugh.
I bought them
in earlier, chillier days
before the clouds
of the quarantine
were clear and menacingly
approaching.

I took each
one
of them
out.
I held them
for a while.
Black thread and needles
for you said you had not one.
A chef's hat
and boxers
with weed leaves on them,
both black.
A warm black sweater.
I held each one
of them
for a while
and kept what could be used
and gave away the rest.

Your birthday card,
the inks of it long dry,
rests somewhere
securely
in a box.

I should have sent them
before the quarantine
was in place.

The mystery of June 19th

  In my agenda, back in the sunny days of January or perhaps early February I had made an entry for June 19th and it was your name. Just your name, nothing more, as if it were out of question that I would remember the meaning behind that. I am sure there was an important reason for me to do that, a reminder to be extra soft around this time but I can not, for the life of me, remember what it was and my bones are racked with guilt over the fact that I can't remember what this one day could have possibly meant to you. We did not even know whether anything would last this long and sure enough it all faded away with spring, the rains of early June washing away what remained. By now it does not feel like anything more than a passing dream.
  I came upon the entry by accident last night, the irony did not escape me, and ever since then I wonder what is the significance of June 19th in between washing the dishes and when I finally managed to find a place to sit on the bus. I wondered again later, while waiting at another stop and tried to work through any possible conversation that I still remember so as to figure it out until a 13 year-old interrupted my thoughts to ask whether she could bum one of the cigarettes I was rolling. I was perplexed over her age but she stayed close and I guiltily rolled one for her. Too young to be addicted to tobacco and I enabled her, what was I thinking?
  Another mystery of June 19th it appears. What was I thinking? In fact I was not, instead I reacted out of reflex, I took the route that would lead faster to some semblance of peace, of normality, of quiet.
  Naturally, you see, at the end of the day I did not ask you what June 19th meant at all.

No text to send

Just at the moment

when I think I don't miss you anymore

a sudden memory comes back
slipping slyly in my brain
and nostalgia

over

takes me.

I don't open our chat anymore
there's no message to debate over sending
it doesn't even cross my mind.
Sometimes during the lonely
long days of quarantine
I scrolled all the way back
to your voice message
that you sent
after leaving me at the airport.
Just to remind myself
what you sounded like
when you loved me.

Now I wonder
was it me you loved

or my loving you?

Sometimes I think
I won't miss you anymore
this time it felt easier
perhaps because your absence
was already mapped out
by experience.
All those years ago
you see
I was running in circles
banging my head
against invisible
invincible
walls.
I was running
in circles.
Until I resolved
to burn the maze
instead of tame it.

This time
there's a different flavour
in missing you

less desperate

more resigned.

No time

There was
no time, to be honest.
No time process
or grieve
or find a start
to picking up the pieces.
I slipped and fell
in every direction
and almost everyone around
was falling too.
And I could hold
no fellow man
no fellow soul
as they were drowning
for my hands grew hollow
and the spine and heart turned to lead
and as the world itself
is poisoning its children
I have no energy
to lie
or feel.

*

I feel the betrayal
of things I'd never do
and words I'd never dare to dream of
seep into my ribs
sliding from their porous surface
to the marrow inside.

I feel cold wind
enveloping me and tilting me backwards
my eyes closing slowly
as I struggle for breath;
that breath does not come
naturally
but it should
should it not?

I let soundless sobs
echo against the walls of my mind
and I mourn
mourn
for the friendships
already in the graveyard
preparing the holes
for the standing ones too.

When the blood you created
turns into water
it starts howling at you.

15.5

  In another world or another time perhaps I would have known the perfect words, when to make the perfect pause, but I can hardly find the way to speak in a normal pace of life, let alone in the weight of silence. The silence has surrounded me, wrapped around me like a blanket - initially I believed that it would choke me but now it's turned into another layer of reality. It is no longer menacing and I stopped trying to trace my faults hidden in the many different folds of it.

  I know that sometimes both silence and noise are necessary for healing and I know that there are many wounds to heal. I want to feel bitter about not being able or allowed or something to this healing process but the truth is I understand. I believe his words way to much to dismiss the just so as to say they were never true. I believe he loved me then. Just as I believe he decided to let go and that has nothing to do with truth or lies.

  What has your life been like, truly been like, for the past two, two and a half months? I have no clear picture except small fragments here and there, except some bleak spots and some flowers you disclosed. What's my life been like, do you know? I wonder what you might know, I am quite certain you know a lighter, diluted version of the sleepless nights, the tears, smoking cigarettes in near desperation for breath. Locking myself in my room to protect what I can from the toxicity of the house, to create a bubble in which I didn't feel my own supposed home expelling me from it, mourning a shattered friendship, a lost job, all while the world slipped from underneath our feet, while worrying for all the people near and the future and the surreal thing that caught us in its grip.

  There were moments when I thought you could almost guess, amidst uncertainty, just how bad things truly got. Like you could sniff through the air the mud. And I wished I could share the load but it felt too selfish to do that and I'm ashamed to admit it. I'm ashamed to say that you had so many things to deal with that I didn't want you to worry about me on top of it all. I'm ashamed to say that the moment you stopped sharing your load, it felt like my right to share mine was also withdrawn. That is not your fault, I merely trying to explain how my brain works and the truth is that to share the ugly stuff I need the other person to do the same. So you see it did not matter, for better or for worse, that you told me to reach out when I didn't feel well. You tried but it was not enough, with me it takes time. How do you reach out when it happens over and over again, when it's not one thing, there is no bullet hole but many slim and nearly undetectable splinters that have found their way inside many different parts of tender flesh. And there's too many of them to ever forget they are there, any tiny movement creates a chain reaction. Where does it hurt? Here, here and here. There, there and there. In the past month it has been near constant, rarely high enough to stop one's breath in one swift reactions, but not low enough to make the passing of each day anything less than exhausting. 

  But where am I going with this even? I do not, at any point, seek to give out blame here and there. I merely look around and see neither of us around. I don't remember when was the last time I felt your presence around me. I used to not miss you because your voice felt with arm's reach and now there I look at the outline of our absence. I think we missed our moment again. And I don't know how to be there for us, I look around and I don't see our meeting point, it's like knowing there was a place I used to remember and I can no longer find my way to it or remember to describe it. 

  Maybe we run out of time. 

  I wish I could actually help.

On quarantine

  Quarantine has proven to be yet another time for self-reflection but it has also been greatly trying for my mind. The house has become toxic, the strands holding it together falling apart faster than it would in any other case. Last year this time around I felt so much sturdier, wobbling but somehow still starry-eyed. I felt I was heading always towards a certain esoteric balance and equilibrium. I felt secure in my relationships with others.
  Yet now I feel more pieces of my life needing to be cut off and taken away, for they are spreading on my psyche in a way that can only be called catastrophic: not exactly cancerous but rather closer to the spreading of gangrene. I feel uncertain in all things except my close family. Everyone keeps saying how this is a time for inner change and development and so on but the truth is that not all of us are allowed the mental space for such an inner reflection. A healthy environment and a lack of anxiety for basic things in the future are necessary for such a thing to happen.
  And so it is not like that. I am mourning for relationships that have fallen irrevocably apart and that have been doing so for some time now. I can at least have the time to do so properly I suppose. But there is not future that I can foresee to plan for. Everything shifts faster than sand under the gusts of wind. In some respects that is relieving and forces one to obtain roots in the present.

*

Stop searching

You said
that many years ago
indeed you put up a wall.
"I stopped searching for you."

But I didn't.
It took me much longer to accept
to move on
to stop looking around every corner
under every word.

And now
years later
you told me "I love you"
in the airport.
"If you don't come
I will.
I don't know
if I can even last a month."

Amidst all the silence
all the chaos
all the ground going under our feet
did you stop looking for me?

I have no reason to give you to stay.
I'm not even looking for one.
The silence has
encircled me.

Faces

Isolation has many faces.
It's leaving the house without breakfast
so that you don't stay
longer than necessary.
It's sitting in a darkened room
in an empty apartment
with your headphones on.
It's lying to your mother
so she doesn't worry more.
It's trying to writing a good morning message
struggling to find words
that don't sound hollow.
It's never writing that message.
It's declining invitations
for want of desire or money.
Wanting company
and quiet
and sacrificing both.
Isolation has many faces
but sometimes it's
the only
shield you hold.

Chaffed

My lips are bitten raw
and I remember
when my skin got so chaffed
from your kisses
and
your teeth
that it turned
too tender to be touched.
It was redder
and you laughed and said
we did not kiss
we dined on each other
instead.