Has anyone ever told you that you look like Sylvia Plath? Or that you sing like Mary Cassatt? Paint like Nina Simone? Is that all irrelevant? The frown on your face scares those around you. Your shoe is a size smaller than you need. My picture won’t fit in it. For the first time you realise that being who you are and not knowing who that can be is the most frightening state of being. The boy is not by your side.
If you can fall in love for a day, then that was me, in love, yesterday. The old love has been laid to rest. One moment erased all that imaginary wonder. If another comes and wants to be the boy in those songs, wants to learn the parts and play along, I will let him. Love can be a feather light paperweight on my bare back. Please don’t leave scars, just a gentle touch. Say you were here but stroke, don’t carve. From time to time I will think about how it might have been. But what’s gone is flying freely in the wind. What never was is kept in a safe place. What is coming, I welcome with open arms. For now, I’ll head out alone and hope for the best.
Sitting on the kerb, a black cat appeared. Are you musicians? - he asked. No, we’re magicians. We’re masters of trickery. We can make you disappear. We can chain you, shove you in a box, put swords through you, saw you in half and still bring you out in one piece. How would you like to join me for a cocktail? The black cat, crossing his legs as he sat in his armchair, lit a cigar and puffed away as he spoke. I’ve seen men before - he said, but never a man in love, what will he do? Us magicians looked baffled, but knew how to remedy this gap in the cat’s knowledge. Fraudulent times - we started. A man in love does not equate a man who looks in love. Sincerity is deceitful, but a man in love will stumble through his life and have only his love on his mind. Alone at night he will head out to find peace with another soul. Leaving the heavy, burdensome life, a man in love will build a palace on his dreams. Melodies, pages, verses will be created. A man in love will walk and walk and walk and with worn through shoes collapse in the arms of the one he loves. A man in love will become vulnerable.
Like Milton let his Adam and Eve have the choice, I will let you choose as well. Not between me and someone else, but between the me you see and the me you don’t. Here is the me you don’t. There? There is someone I have made only for you. When you find me, please let me be who I need to be.
Has anyone ever told you that you look like Sylvia Plath?
P.S. Don’t even try to argue this one. No reason or rhyme was indented for it. Just words juxtaposed in these fraudulent times. But thanks for sticking by me anyway…
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