i've become old...

i can tell by

1) the seasons, growing shorter

trees these days seem to be in such a hurry to
shake their leaves off

2) the growing number of people that are gone

by the time you come back with tea and
madeleines

...

wherever the days went
that's where they took my friends, too

they've all gone in search for
Bigger & Better
(although i can't imagine what could be
Better than my tea)  

they've all gone in light of
promises

"she promised to live with me..."

"i promised myself that one day..."

"the future is promising..."

"more promising than here..."

me,
i stopped believing in these promises
last Sunday when i overheard the neighborhood tarot
sobbing in the Confession booth:

"Father, that's when I realized that
the only promise in this world
is the present"

...

i find promise in
smaller promises,
such as

1) a good chance of rain this afternoon

2) your alarm has been set to 7 AM

3) see you tomorrow

...

people don't remember what they ate for breakfast,
while they remember the life they have yet to live
and so
i stopped remembering

...

i only hope that when tomorrow comes the
view outside my window will not change
and what that view means to me
will not change, as well

the city will still light up all the night with its strange fire
and the people will still be in love with powerwalking

...

in truth
i live in this state of constant fear:
when i turn away, the city will cease
(like dream machines)

if i blink too hard,
this all might just become a line
from some book i think
i read sometime in
grade school
(which name i can't recall)

if i were to move away
would it all wait for me?

do i really love this?

or am i just afraid of losing it?

and while i wonder,
i don't dare take my eyes off of
the view outside my window

...

you say that life is loving and leaving
again and again,

then i'm not interested in life

what's so beautiful about broken hearts?

...

if happiness for me
is 2nd paragraph on page 149,
let me be an inkblot
in time, forever still

meanwhile, at the capital...

streets lined with
mattresses like
piles of flesh

trees above
that shudder
like a final breath

a branch of cherry blossom
like baby pink fingertips
of limp forearms dangling off
edges of crinkled white mattresses,

a flower

(i only hope that it won't be so sad)

somewhere, in an empty row of trees,
that you still exist
is a truth that i cannot believe

and like the gentle sway of foxtails in the wind,
it is a truth, that can be seen
yet cannot be felt by the heart

when i was young i would squint my eyes and watch
those faraway hills, bobbing in and out of my vision

and as if to say
those faraway days will never return,
the hills in my pillowcase
are easy to see and
ever so close

...

when i close my eyes i begin to dream, what is not a dream but a spring that will one day come to me, and in that spring, looking to find again that empty row of trees, is a scene where i turn my head to home, and unlike some melodrama i can feel the sorrow on my face meanwhile i stare and stare and stare with my heart, yearning to feel something that cannot ever be seen, and that is just like the gentle sway of foxtails in the wind...