This is the city where M lives. He lives there without telling me anything, but I got it, because I already tried to find him in the city where we used to live ten years ago. He didn’t run and hide and I didn’t hide and seek. We just lived the slow motion of fast forwarded different videos in exactly the same player and exactly the same duration. He moved and I stayed. Footsteps flipped and flopped. He clicked and I clicked. The clock ticked and tocked.

I half thought about M for a half of duration of my half fast forwarded life.

This is the city where M lives. We didn’t meet. We were two dots of the millions ones, moving, and trying to get into the tube on time.

Ég er ugla, sumar ugla
Ég er ugla, sumar ugla
Ég er ugla, sumar ugla
Ég er ugla, sumar ugla

Most of the time I draw myself as a bunny, but perhaps I’m an owl at heart. Such a tragedy because an owl eats a bunny and I start to feel like eating myself inside out. I put Rugla on repeat mode and think very patiently as if I had all time I’d need. I left my suitcase a half opened, and my books bookmarked. My ego makes me an owl at night. An owl; a summer owl, because I like the rain. And, if I die, I want to die with the fireflies.

I’m an owl
su-summer owl

Lately, it is harder to find the empty spaces I used to fill with words. Those words that dim at night.

Lately, I miss a lot of rhymes.

Promise me we will go to see the geyser, stay for a while, and you will name your son Harrison.

Promise me I will have no worry about consuming sugar, drawing on the wall, missing my high-school friends, owning more camera, or running a little vintage bookshop.

Promise me you will graduate, and when I do, you’d clap the loudest, and wait for me with the cliché; bouquet of flowers. You would smile, so would the flower seller. Then the pavements would surely be full.

Promise me then.

Thanks for letting me know that
it doesn’t have to be extraordinary
to be special

Thanks for letting me know that:
There will be sun, sun, sun

People do this all the time. Covering the eyes because they see what they don’t want to see.
I’m doing this right now. Hiding beneath my palms because I don’t see what I want to see.

After a year, everything seems still to be misplaced.
Like a carton of white milk outside the refrigerator, a Vogue subscription form lying wet on the bathroom, a camera inside the wardrobe, books under the table, dolls upside down, keyboard near the empty wrapper of instant cappuccino. Broken sofa on the crowded street.

Your messages, dated almost a year ago.
I still have them completely. Like stamps of dead philatelist but also like lyric of an instrumental song.
Your face, his face, my fate.

My little heart.

After a year, everything seems still to be misplaced.

Hey there Joulise,

From the way you held the camera, I could tell that you weren’t okay. Well, maybe you are always not because you doubt the universe, and your idea of falling in love, and any kind of faith.

Trust me Joulise,
We can never live a life if it is not upon the Earth or under the tales of the end of the rainbow, with a happily ever after scene of Apple Pie Princess and Prince that had just turned back handsome guy after being a gastropod. But we have to deal with the reality, that guys can be gay, or jerks, or ugly, or all, and sometimes we can’t choose.

We can live with or without beer, but life is on its best when we are not drunk. When we can hear even the smoothest noise, when we can see the picture, big or small, not closely, but clearly. Not instantly but directly. Not silently, but not halfheartedly.

Joulise Joulisa,

This is not about you or me. This is not about Holga or Diana. This is not about Paris or Sydney. This is not about Silas or Jonas. This is not about our horoscope, or our good lives. What I mean is, be still, and be good. Be fine, and be glad. Sometimes, take a fresh dawn air. Walk outside, and put your sweater on. Don’t be sad.

I wish your name were started with P.

 
 

With love,

 
 
 
 

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