For Somebody

The cold wind is unstoppably finding its way through the cracks in the walls of my apartment. Winter is unapologetic and forceful, intent on halting life for a moment. Frozen, unable to continue with evil. Silent and obedient, the way mankind never is. It is not a success, not even for a moment. This season of white changes my city. Changes this city most fundamentally. I hardly recognise the streets, I hardly find resemblance in the people. Only when the cold sets in does the city become impolite, impatient, rude almost to its carers. Leave now, I want peace. I need a moment without you. Then we retreat to our homes where the cold air dances loops around the lamps hanging ornately from the ceiling.

I am shocked at the ambivalence of my heart. Breaking whilst landing on soft ground. Blooming for the love that it seeks to abandon. Breaking for the one that it has its eyes on. Unable to decide to mourn or celebrate. Where do eleven years disappear to? How long must the heart feel like it is betraying a memory? The cold can never get to it, but its own doing creates its demise. Running with excitement towards one whilst crying desperately for the one it is leaving behind. Were it warm, the heart would know better. Know not to want. Know not to ache. Know not to trust the winter days for the wind will stop its beating in a moment.

Softly the streets are covered with snow. All ambitions of love begin and you who want to conquer the frozen paths have to tread very lightly. The melody hums of something hopeful and broken. The beat is almost unheard, soft so as to never disturb the flakes that peacefully lie on one another. Piling up, a blanket for the heart to fall broken and bleeding. What was it that you wanted? My soul? Everything we had ever owned now becomes a distant memory. Your laugh, your hand, your ideas of a future that we never had. Now another wants a part, wants to show a new meaning of love. I need the old to be able to free my heart for the new, mould me into the person I am needed to be.

Never shield your ears from the songs that hurt. They cleanse. Never pretend like you do not need them. Each beautiful melody will turn your heart back to where it should be. Each song will make winter sweeter, the pain from the void of the old lover lesser, the hope for the new much much stronger. With each sad song I know that I could use somebody. Somebody like you.

A house of straw

Once a big wind blew with the bellows of doubt that destroyed the fragile house you built. Once the words you said out loud betrayed you. Not so long ago you thought that forever would stay for ever. Now the dark night steals each tear you cry for the days gone. Salvation has left your heart with no hope of a return.

Those bricks, you once so determined, carried close to where you both stood are now nothing but a reminder of how deep bullets can wedge their impermeable bodies. Between hearts, between souls, between the words for and ever. After you shake off the shackles, an empty shell is what remains. You seem lifeless, void of the colours that once glowed in your heart.

You asked me once to keep safe a love from long ago. It meant much to you, it made me important. You said that another will have you, now that other will be nothing more than a love from long ago. Someone else, or maybe me, will keep that love safe. A love that has died, that has lived, thrived, blossomed and now gone. Incomprehensible its story.

Incomprehensible you are to me.

One of the last days of careless summer

How I wondered, walking slowly down your streets, how long your glorious buildings would stand the mischievous sunshine. How long would you let the hopeful summer hearts roam the avenues in search of their missing halves. Would there ever be an end to the silent scorching afternoons that have graced many a days since the snows disappeared. Can I hope for your lifeline to send vaporised, misty messages into the sky. To have the bones of your ribs bend over the fumes of the autumn escaping. White lies cover the cobbles and in the spirit of change hurriedly sail to the Black Sea, forever away.

Please, do not mention winter. It is too soon. The memories burn in my brain and the ice hurts as it forms close to my heart. The poisonous air then stays trapped between the crooked and lean chimneys, between the bricks of centuries past. Then I am helpless. Then you become more bare and beautiful than any other time I have ever seen you. Stripped to the core I can turn to you and with honesty’s bare bones visible, we know that whatever is said then, stays forever imprinted, unchanged. Until the ill-formed ideas of spring, the somewhat childish enthusiasm of the first snowdrops come to erase the months before and turn our flittering hearts towards the tickling, weak, barely visible first rays of the sun.

For now I can smell the change. The bitter twist in your filthy air. Now it wraps itself around me, now it escapes every touch. It is distinct and unique. I can tell, it will be a beautiful winter. My silence will fill the piercing echoes you send through every vessel that states your dominance. Everything around you will heed and still you will not allow kindness to break the armour. There is no heart – the cry will come. I will defend your actions and your hurtful ways. I will show them that just because the storm has covered every glimpse of gentleness, you are still who you were on those lovely spring mornings.

The questions become answers. The wait becomes the natural way of life. The course that our lives take together becomes the only real thing you and I know. I fear for the day when we will have to part ways. I fear for my heart in your autumn streets. I fear for my soul on the frozen back of your river. I fear for my life amidst the careless flowers of your spring awakening. I fear summer the most, for it ends the quickest.

I stay faithfully yours, bound in deep love and painful chains.

Say something, I’m giving up on you

It’s been a long year. Cold in parts, freezing at moments, unbearable heat in waves, your voice flickering, your words swallowed whole by the echo that’s wedged between us. By the edge of the cliff I wait. A roaring thunder and you vanished, I could no longer see. It’s nearly been a year, now I wish I had the power to live somewhere else. On top of this lovely cliff is where I made my home, somehow close to you, but void of your love that once glowed. Slowly I learn what the birds tell me, but I’m waiting for you to say something. I wait just a little longer. Maybe one more day, maybe tomorrow I’ll hear that voice.

The soil is cooling down, nights bring a faint arctic breeze that will only strengthen in the days and months to come. I am prepared. I am well armed against the cold, the bitter power ending all glimpse of beautiful, coloured life. On the coattails of the northern stream I wish to whisk my armoured heart away. Close to nothing else but you. If I set off, I may freeze. If in deep slumber I am taken far from all that I know, I may imagine a world of glittering sunshine. Without a guide in that world of warmth, I may burn.

The curious passer-by offers a helping hand. I know it seems like a hopeless case – I kindly say, but trust the heart, I know I only have to wait another day. If I give up, who else will ever have the patience? The beasts of the wild would think me weak and overtake my spot in a second if I left to graze my lonely heart on a field further ahead. I’m not afraid. Come night, come rain, come cold, come any lurking carnivore: I stay, in earnest and hope: I stay, and imagine that I will hear the voice I long to hear.

I notice that the angels who stumble upon this cliff are fallen and broken. Ferocious in their intent to heal, but incomplete. With time the eyes learn to see the invisible. In my silence they sense my presence. I hear their whimpers; they bring their brokenness near, almost near enough to touch. En route to salvage the souls they have the power to still save, I expect them not to heed to my unfortunate heart’s ailment. But then I get a promise of a return, a promise I almost allow myself to believe. If only they were not fallen. If only these angels were not broken so.

A fire’s burning for now, it’s keeping me warm, it’s keeping me light. Like clockwork I hum our melody in the hope that you will this evening, finally, say something.

Ain’t it funny

How love slipped away, said his mother to her lover.
Now we’re free to choose, said his father to his lover.
And every moment was wasted, said your mother to your father.
From then on, nobody ever heard your voice in that house.
Not your mother, not your father, not your sister, they never even heard a sound.

This may break your heart, said your father to his lover.
The baby boy may not survive, said your mother to her lover.
You can leave this place any time, said your mother to your father to his lover.
The silence from the room caused no suspicion.

Sometimes staying is the hardest, said your mother to her lover.
I can’t be the one you build on, said your father to his lover.
We sat in silence, unmoved by guilt, said his father to his mother to her lover.
Darkened skies await the morning, there’s no sunshine.
No, they never even heard a sound.

I regret nothing, said your mother to your father.
Only moments ago I knew the reason, said your father to your mother.
We keep our souls intact, said his mother to his father to his lover.
And await salvation, said his father to his mother to her lover.
Without a word, the answers fell from the sky.
To his mother, to his father, to his sister, to their lovers.

So this is goodbye

My heart is aching from change. Change that must inevitably come, that must sweep across and create opportunities whilst demolishing already existing patterns. Upsetting the equilibrium that has been constructed for ease of mind. Change, like a devastating storm, a hurricane, lashes out at all corners of the soul. I break. I learn to live with the pain of letting go, whilst cherishing every memory. I break from the burden of the past. I see only pain. To mourn the time passed is the only way to celebrate its existence. The tears are heavy still and roll down my cheeks as they hurry to hit the ground and with a sound of splash announce their painful arrival at the end of the journey.

Here’s to love, to friendship. Here’s to your phantom that follows me, traces my steps back to its own, holds me captive. Here’s to the future that may hold a kind of happiness that is to this day unknown. It is certain that my heart will have to endure changes on a much larger scale yet. I am afraid that it is simply not cut out to bear the burden. I fear love will not have the bravery to call my name again.

I don’t lightly use words like forever. I know that forevers, they come and go. Some moments are easy, some others I find hard to live through. In my weakest I promise you forever and in your weakest you believe my insincerity. Then we’re both hurt and now I cannot fathom a life without you. I have not said a word and you have not promised me a thing. I will vanish as quickly as I have appeared. I will take my forevers with me and ask your ghost to kindly leave. Leave like a lover who has to say goodbye.

So let this be goodbye.
So this is goodbye.

I Hurt Too

Not by the words I said out loud, but by the ones that never made it to air. The ones that have been forced to live in my heart, silent. I hurt by the amazing ability of another soul to torment with unsung thoughts. I look not to your weaknesses but to my own frailty and flaws. I hurt by the motionless present and by the prospect of a future so still. I hurt not by your careless ways, but my own uncertainty. Clinging to doubt as if that was the only answer, wishing with every fibre in my body for something certain. I lose my footing and see myself tangled in the words you’ve said out loud to me. The ones I cared to hear.

I hurt by time. By time’s reckless rummaging through the memories. Those instances that are only apparent in the faded corners of their frames. I could cry I hurt so much. By my own choices and foolish mistakes. I cringe at the thought that I could have chosen better, done better, preformed better, loved better, missed better. When night comes to take over from the everlasting powers of the day, my heart starts to beat louder. My limbs move slower. My soul whispers and I listen. The burden of a life, the burden of an empty and meaningless life comes to haunt every single soul on this earth. Then we lie, curl up to the smallest we can be and wish that moment away. I wish it away on most nights, but tonight I admit that I hurt. Not by the words you have said out loud to me, but by the ones that never made it to my heart. I hurt by the silence that I see around me. I hurt by the rhythmless melodies and by the melodiesless rhythms. I mostly fail when I try and the days haunt me.

I hurt when I see the one who sings to me insincere. I break then. I break to shatter to a million pieces but at the end of the gentle cooing I emerge as a grand statue, not a crack, not a sign of brokenness. The face hides the darkest secrets masterfully. I am me and I hurt. Most days I will not let you see, but most days I hurt. I know that most days you hurt too. I know that every heart that has never found its way to you causes you pain. I know that uncertainty hurts you. I know that you are maimed by the thought of failure. I know that you are paralysed by self doubt. I know that you hurt just from the simple burden of a few short hours of the day. When the sun hides, when the birds stay silent. When the one who should care only turns away to never show a look of concern. I know that your heart would not beat if it never hurt. I know the streets could not greet you if they knew you were unable to hurt. The power to change can be painful, can be remarkably free.

I see chance in every morning but by night know that every hour since then breathed to hurt me. I awake with newfound bravery. I show it to you, you show it to me. Together we fight the hurt that will come and conquer, make us stronger, make us live better, make us love much, much more than we ever knew we could.

While I hurt and while you hurt, while we all hurt a little, there is a chance that we are just learning to take care of each other a little better.

are you still in love with the world?

I’m not a thief, nor have I been bestowed with powers special or exclusive. Never will I get your full attention. Never will I shine, sparkle or glitter. I am not likely to appear before you as anything else than what I am. I have no talent to disguise the raw, perhaps uncomfortable parts. I am no thief to steal the colourful feathers of others. I won’t make an impression, my face, you will not find imprinted in your mind. I won’t impress with mere words, looks or thought. You won’t catch yourself wondering how it was possible I had not come your way sooner. I am a ghost. I am a humble being, accepting and peace loving. I try not to manipulate or dictate. I appear bear before everyone. I hide nothing and I distort nothing.

I try.

I try not to hide or distort anything. I try to appear bear. I try to be a humble being. I try to be a ghost. I try to impress with thoughts, with love, with ideas about sincerity. I try to stay upright, straight, fair, just. I try to fight spinelessness in everyone. I try to learn the talents of covering the raw and uncomfortable parts. I try to sometimes show more love than I feel. I try to sparkle, shine. I try always to get your full attention. I try to imagine powers of an exclusive kind.

Now is the time for actions: to wake from paralysing slumber, to stir after the many years of stillness. To try and find the waterfall in the middle of the peaceful lake. These times are hopeful and crushing at the same time. I have befriended hope many a year ago. My faithful companion, I lean on the mature advice of the heavy hearted hope. Mostly it is a liberating ally, but at times it is a wretched being, tormenting my poor soul because it can. Yet, I wake each morning with a freshness and fullness that only hope can make me own. I praise it then, I hang ornament like compliments on its already over decorated garment. Until the end of the day when invisibly it begins to torment me anew. At night, hope is most wretched at night. In sweet dreams I wrestle with its angels, I fight a bloody battle with its white covered agents. Hope sends its army to win me over from reason and better judgement. For the whole night I fight ceaselessly and wake to defeat. Still, in the morning, again, it is hope who dictates the terms, who makes the streets appear kinder, the river cleaner, the sun brighter and love much, much closer. I am helpless in the face of such an adversary.

I cannot deny the darkness and in no way do I wish to do so. It is part of the life that I am choosing to live, that I have been given to make the most of. The dark sometimes lingers for days, weeks. It knows no time and never appears considerate of others around. Dark is dark, a lord in the soul for uncontrollable periods of time. I never grow angry at its presence, never fully wish it away. Just like hope in its wretched form, the dark can propel the soul to find ways towards the light much faster. Then it escapes and realises that it is still in love with the world. In love with every moment, with every human, with every flower, with every street and tree, bridge and building, hill and cave and river and cloud. Somehow, at times, the dark learns to smile.

I feel I’m moving towards something with the same speed that I am moving away from something else. This makes me still, but humble and patient. I wait for another year.

Love, save the empty

Let’s go to a place infected with truth
And resist with all our hearts

Seeing my face reflected in the glass of the speeding bus, alarmed by the wrinkles and the severe stare. Alarmed to see how my smiling cheeks have now turned sombre, lonely, sad in just a moment. Thoughts zig-zagging their way through my mind mostly concerned with truth. The notion holding the power to manoeuvre a fraction of a second against me and cast a veil of sorrow onto my happy state. Life and death hanging onto a moment. Love and loss hanging onto a moment. Truth and lies, the beliefs of one man, the pain of another. The void and the fullness, the loneliness and the fulfilment. The moment is king in the land of eternity.

I’m frightened and faithless. I ceased to believe in my future. I used to have faith, but faith has parted from me. Instead she has left sadness and fear. I no longer dream or chase hope with unshakable certainty. I have come to understand that the truth may be bloodier, dirtier than initially portrayed. I have found how gruesome the toil for the wishes so sacred can be. Complacency had gnawed at my heart, but now out of fear and fright I have come to accept the sadness that inevitably descends. Tried to embrace that moment, that precise moment when everything changes. When it becomes apparent that everything must and will take new form. That faith can no longer hold together the house of hope, a construction prone to consistent questioning, harsh words of caution. I am desperately trying to find a way out, to save myself from drowning by clutching a piece of floating wood. An old, crumbling, soaked trunk. Without faith, all’s bleak.

I am afraid.

To sacrifice the most precious can lead back into the fruitful kingdom of the heavenly maker? In the hope of making Truth my guide and Faith my companion, I am attempting to rid my soul of its burden. Of its useless weight, in excess, the lifeless and useless hopes and dreams. My soul’s dragging itself like a shadow behind me. Broken almost by the weight it is carrying in vain. I give them up so reluctantly. But I must, with faith escaping and sadness weaving its warm and comforting arms around every fibre of my body; I must try to rid the shackles. If I repent, I might hear an answer from the heavens above. If I offer what is unthinkably difficult to part with, I might get a reward. Like Abraham, with a heavy heart and deadly doubt, I take my one possession toward the place where all sacrifices are made. I question my own sincerity, but I give you up. For forty days and forty nights I breathe never for you. I seek never your wishes. I want nothing that’s yours. Nothing that’s you. This is my lent, purging my soul of you.

I have walked too far for you
I have waited too long for you
I have lied too many times for you
And I have followed your love ‘till there never really was at all

prague

She greeted me like an old lover. She recognised me instantly, welcomed me, and allowed me to see her all. She has changed. No longer is she the city that we knew, no longer is she careless, immature, all heart and no head. She is now cloaked in more dutiful garments. She compares herself to the likes of Paris, Brussels. She kept her Prussian pride but took ornaments from Provence. Now she is more style and grace, less of the bohemia she used to be. She grew with you. She grew with me. In time she will grow old with us, even if the stones and cobbles are changed and replaced. Her soul she shared with us, her soul you keep, her soul I keep.

I found a quiet city, a place true and sincere, taking a well deserved break from the curious eyes, the foreigners, the tourists. Come spring, she will have to dress her best and stand still for the pictures until the bitter cold arrives again. Yet she does not tire. For now she was amongst her own, a quiet and fragile city with deep wrinkles of history and love for even the smallest and newest of its inhabitants. Kindly she rested, waited for the early hour of the sundown and apologised to me for the many changes that masqueraded her parts from me. She said I would find the memories, that she has kept them safe.

I lost myself to beautiful dream: engulfed in passion with an old lover. There it was simple and then it was beautiful. There was no end and there was no reason to fear. The love that we forgot came rushing back with every touch, with every velvet glance. The rain tapping on the leaves outside sounded like applause to the quiet love we made. The city held us, kept us from prying eyes. It was a dream of the past and the future, in a place we both know so well. You and the city are still the reasons I dream each night.

This place I once called home, romanticised as it may have been, posed again as home. Could not wait for me to decide to stay. Saw me leave and could not hide the tears. I said I would be back, in a year or two, I would come again. She wanted me to stay, insisted that I make her my home again. I said Budapest waits, I cannot betray my present love. She understood only because she saw the sorrow in my eyes. She said Budapest is lucky, I said she knows very well. There is nothing I would not do for my old love, but the memories die once lifted from their precious resting place. They can be revisited, but never relived. Prague pained me, she always does, but she makes sure I land on soft grass. My heart hurt and I was unable to stop the tears. Dear Prague, don’t forget you love me, today.

Once I arrived back in Budapest, I grew calm and peace filled my heart. This love is good to me, allows me to dream, helps me find the old in the new.

Notes to an absent lover

You whisper in my ear, soft, inaudible, that heaven waits. Waits one day.
I should follow, ahead, towards the light, my heart begs me to move.
The sky above opens when your words whisper to me.
I’m coming, slowly I’m on my way.
The ghost that you are, the sweet thought that you’ve become, the wish that your face turns into convince me of heaven.
I cannot but place one foot after the other and follow you home.
But I cannot walk as fast as you want.
The fog makes you disappear, I’m alone.
Pain shrinks my faith to a size no longer visible. The bed was never taken, I have always been alone.
My tears are heavy, they drip, like thickened blood mark my face. A face of longing.
I have no power, you are my all.
Your promise of heaven keeps me on the path that sees my body break to pieces.
Your ghost, an optical illusion, a beckoning force leads me further from what I know to be true.
I am tired.
And alone.
You play with the heart so careless.
You destroy me.
The breezy meadows and sweet fruits of pine trees, the scent of hope and the sight of success help me carry on.
Burdened and bound, determined and captive, I answer your whisper.
I rest when I see the moon’s been following.
I go nowhere, stand motionless, with feet cracked and lifeless from the endless walk.
Your love calls me. I move the unmovable.
With my useless feet and burdened body, I run towards our heaven.

The story of Micó and Maszat

I wish I could travel in time. Or at least have some say in determining its velocity, the force and speed at which it changes lives. Knowing the end would bring no immediate relief, but once apparent, time travel could be a viable option to see, revisit, and rekindle with those who are gone. To lessen the pain or even make indefinite a particularly finite entity.

I’m hurting but I’m not hurt.

There are no bruises on my body, but the loss, the void is painful. Almost unbearable to live with. The life I have known thus far had companions who made every day different. Because they taught me unquestioning love. They showed me non judgemental commitment. Honest emotion embodied in the twosome that were my Micó and Maszat. Oftentimes I would be humbled by the untiring and boundless love they showed each and every day. As if we were starting anew, all past malicious intent had been forgotten. The past existed only as a platform for formidable memories and nothing more. With them I learnt about life. With them I saw love. With their help I understood the importance of devotion. With them I saw truth.

I’m hurting but I’m not hurt.

Nowhere does pain pierce at me but my heart. Where I keep them, where they have been ripped from. My loves. My friends. My siblings. My children. My past. My childhood. My innocent years gone with you. Now comes the time when I’m alone to face the evils of man and beast alike. You can’t guide me, I can no longer see. The biggest adventures and most fierce but playful fights, the quiet and calm evenings by the fire, the many many houses and many different streets, the many adversaries and the family you called your own. After a year apart, you’ve joined forces, but I’m alone. I keep your sweet faces in my memory and will start thinking about the impossible task of letting go.

Goodbye. Know you’ve given me life. Know that I’ll be hurting for a while. Know that no others could have made our lives complete. Know that the love you carry will always stay.

Know that we’re hurting, but we’re not hurt.