Dear Armand,

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring. I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands; how did your lips feel on mine? Because of you I love the white statues that have neither voice nor sight. I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten your eyes. Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me you will do me irreparable harm. Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls. I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every window. Because of you the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because of you I seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting stars, falling objects.

Love forever and always,
Sheryl.
(courtesy of P. N.)

Her Love Story

Lying at the bottom of a lake, where the sunlight is too weak to penetrate, where she is shrouded in complete darkness, she longs to be remembered. 

She feels safe in the heart of the lake. The gentle current nudges her but she is tangled in seaweeds, her hair is caught in the rocks and she remains where she had sunk. In the blessed darkness, in the water-clogged silence, she can finally sleep for a millennium of nights. Everything seems so slow and far away where she is. The water swirls in a drugged sluggishness, cradling her the way her mother never did. 

She wonders about him up above - it seems so distant and so otherworldly. She wonders if he would remember her years from now. The girl who drowned. It sounds so romantic, so tragically beautiful that she almost want to drown again. The feel of water rushing into her lungs, filling her up, squeezing the emptiness out of her soul... 

She longs to be remembered through stories told; how she had been forced to swallow her fears, her voice and finally her love. The stories are bubbling inside of her, threatening to spill. If she opens her mouth it would all come tumbling out: black and viscous, putrid and repugnant. It would pour from her; from her mouth and her eyes and her ears until she is flaccid and depleted. 

Lying at the bottom of the lake she muses about the greatest love stories ever written: of Romeo and Juliet and Cleopatra and Mark Antony. He loved her and she loved him. And now that she's dead, her's will be a love story amongst star-crossed lovers. 

Son of Sam

By serial killer, David Berkowitz, aka Son of Sam

I've always had an unhealthy obsession with serial killers, psychologically wise. It's magic how their minds work. More than half of the serial killers have disconcertingly high IQs. It's fascinating how twisted their minds are. One of my favourite serial killers, (sounds weird, doesn't it?) is David Berkowitz, who wrote beautiful letters to taunt the police. The above is also a letter of his. My favourite is this poem:


Because Craig is Craig,
So must the streets be filled with Craig (death)
And huge drops of lead
Poured down upon her head
Until she was dead -
Yet the cats still come out at night to mate
And the sparrows still sing in the morning.

Please Love Me

It seems that I've gotten used to loving you without having you around. Those bitter days spent longing for you: for your chin resting on top of my head, for your fingers interlaced with mine, for your arm draped around my shoulder; those days are stacked in the darkest corner of my subconscious mind.

Once a while on a rainy day I leaf through the yearnings, the pangs of desire that arched my body and stole my soul - because that's what you do to me. Science proved that when a star dies it forms a black hole that sucks everything, even light into its abysmal void. And that's what your absence is like - a black hole, sucking my innards and my soul, even the light of my life into an event horizon. It sucks and pulls and pulls and sucks until I lie as empty as a shell.

Even if I tried to forget you, even if I have you incarcerated in the dustiest room of my mind, you would've seeped between cracks under doors and through keyholes. And as though in revenge you would've haunted me night and day, with your face imprinted on the back of my lids, so that even in sleep I dreamt of you.

And I would've hated myself for being willing to continue loving you in misery, just for the smallest chance that you would love me too.

The Longest Night

In the darkness there is but
White flashes of flesh:
My arms and yours;
the half light.

The reverberating hollowness that
Captures my heart holds
Dominion over me. Every
Heartbeat hurts and

I couldn't breathe.
It doesn't matter that
We're breathing breathlessness
Into each other.

And it doesn't matter that
We both know we
Won't last the night.

Air

They say that she would never wake again. She lies perfectly still on the bed, arms demurely set on both of her sides, eyes gently closed. She drifts in and out of consciousness, and she listens.

The men and women, they whisper - yet they couldn't have spoken much louder. The hiss of breath that escapes from the gaps of their teeth as they whisper, the brush of fabric on naked skin as they unconsciously shift their position; all these are aberrantly loud to her. As though she is the air that occupies the room. The constant beeping of the monitor pulsates through her, she could dance a jig to the rhythm, yet she couldn't feel it. She wanted to touch it - her heart - but she couldn't find it. 

Air. She could be the air. She tests the notion in her head. She would be everywhere then. She could diffuse through the tiniest pore, she could inhabit him. She could occupy his mouth, fill his mouth with her and only her. She could slip through his shirt, lie on his chest as he sleeps. She could breathe on him, she could lick him, she could squeeze him with all her might and he would not have noticed. 

Her dreams then, would have come true: she had always wanted to be just like Ariel, the little mermaid. Only instead of becoming a mermaid, she becomes air.