I keep on wait­ing
for a re­lief; she’ll come bare­foot

Like the wind she’ll
blow out the can­dles I’ve lit
and like the wind she’ll
whisper in my ear

I’m wait­ing for that
whisper in my ear …

Because I’ve picked up this strange habit of for­get­ting to ex­ist at times. True, I wake up in flesh and blood, and I walk through the air as it parts for me. Yet between my step out of one room and into the other, I find my­self dis­solv­ing into thin air: much like a whis­per that never finds its ear.

I keep on wait­ing
for a quick kiss;
a peck on the cheek will do.
or a red slap
right on that same cheek.

Because I’ve picked up this strange habit of wal­low­ing in en­nui; of bask­ing in the dull glow of the half moon and SCREAMING as a phan­tasm that never ex­isted yet I’m right here and phan­tas­mal and SCREAMING

I keep on wait­ing
on the ter­race and bare­foot

I keep on wait­ing
on the ter­race at 11 pm

I keep on wait­ing
on the ter­race with the power out

I keep on wait­ing
on the ter­race where I’m the only man in the uni­verse

It’s 11 pm, served with a light driz­zle and a gar­nish of ab­solute dark­ness here on this ter­race where I stand so lonely I don’t ex­ist at all

And here the stars have de­scended into the gourds amongst whom I stand
And here they’ll wan­der down to the kitchen gar­den twin­kling as ever
And here they’ll land upon the bushes: a con­stel­la­tion of berries
And here they’ll ripen into Fireflies,
one pre­sumes,
to flicker for a lit­tle while just
to go out like a can­dle

And among these Fireflies, I wait.
I wait for that bare­foot wind and her sub­dued whis­per
to put me out for a lit­tle while
so I can wake up in flesh and blood
and re­main in flesh and blood for the rest of the day

Because I’ve picked up this strange habit of be­ing every­when:
in the vast ar­ray of name­less days,
in the spec­trum be­tween the Full Moon and the Crescent,
during the af­ter­noons and the evenings,
and all mo­ments in be­tween.

And so my abode is smeared across days of the week and stretched across the months
And it might even­tu­ally set­tle it­self across the years and decades
like a dead cat curled up but rot­ten.

In my abode the time-stream flows like end­less words, re­lent­less words,
words that never stop and words that never stay

So I wait,
for that flow­ery gig­gle
which will punc­tu­ate these words
into sen­tences that I can live
one at a time

So I wait
for the kisses
which will punc­tu­ate these
Sundays and Wednesdays,
and the un­told num­ber of Fridays,
into hours that I can live
one at a time

Featured photo by Mike Lewinski on Unsplash