Rumah joglo di tengah sawah.
Dengan cahaya remang yang berasal dari pojok ruangan ini.
Pemutar piringan hitammu baru selesai kau perbaiki.
Ku memilih untuk mendengarkan album Chet Baker Sings dengan vokalnya, seingatku itu milik mendiang kakekmu.
Gelas-gelas tinggi sudah kau siapkan, sebotol anggur dari Bordeaux sudah ku buka.
Makan malam kita sudah tandas, dua piring penuh berisi daging sapi yang sore tadi ku panggang, hampir matang penuh, bersama hancuran kentang yang sedikit dibubuhi garam dan lada, dengan saus krim jamur.
Jasmu sudah kau tanggalkan dan sampirkan di sisi sofa coklat tua itu.
Gaun hitamku masih rapih melekat pada tubuhku, namun rambutku, yang hanya sepanjang bahu, sudah ku urai, agar kau bisa menghirup harum bunga sakuranya.
Kita menari, pelan, sembari menengguk asam dan manisnya anggur Bordeaux itu.
Ku kira Chet Baker telah letih bernyanyi dan bermain trumpet, suaranya perlahan hilang, digantikan oleh suara jangkrik dari luar sana.
Aku pun lelah, ku rebahkan tubuhku di sofa coklat itu, menyandarkan kepala di dekat sampiran jasmu, menghirup bau cendana yang hampir hilang.
Kau menghampiriku, memelukku erat, menghirup leherku, pipiku, dan mengecup bibirku.
Pelan-pelan, satu per satu pakaian kita tanggal, di bawah cahaya temaram, ditemani suara jangkrik, kita melebur, melebur jadi satu.
Tanah Ubud, tak pernah gagal membuatku jatuh cinta, sengaja maupun tidak.

You know what they say,

“It’s better to have loved and lost,
than never to have loved at all.”,

but when someone you love leaves you,
that saying feels like the farthest thing from the truth,

she’s less than a meter away from me,
only a sleeping cat separates us on our bed,
but in this moment,
we feel worlds apart,

and we’re both trying to keep our independence,
and neither one of us knows who will break first,

she’s leaving me,
and I can’t think of a more romantic place to leave someone,

we are in a house on a hill in Ubud,
a place so beautiful this could be a Fairy Tale,

but this is no fairy tale,
this is a day dream turned nightmare,
this is the exactly the type of situation,
that’s made me almost give up on love,

like,
why even give all our energy to a person,
when we know the person is just going to go away,
go away like every one before and after,

because everyone goes away,

she’s already gone away,
I felt her leave yesterday,
as she sat chatting to a friend on Messenger,
sometimes someone doesn’t have to say a thing to say “Goodbye”,

sometimes someone can leave you even when they are still in the same room,

she is still here but we both know she’s already gone,

she’s less than a meter away from me,
only a sleeping cat separates us on our bed,
but in this moment,
we feel worlds apart,

and I wonder where she’s headed,
she says back to Melbourne,
but part of me doesn’t believe her,
part of me believes she’s escaping back to Venus,

because she’s not from Melbourne,
and she’d only been there a week when I met her,
and we both know Venus is where she’s really from,
we both know there’s nothing for her in Melbourne,

nothing except for maybe a minimum wage job,
working the the same system she claims to reject,
nothing except a few childhood friends,
high on drugs ready to bring her down,

and I want to tell her all of this,
but she reads English better than she hears it,
so I’d rather write it all out for her,
so that she can take the time to read it,

because even though,
she stumbles with English a bit,
we both speak the language of Love perfectly,
and that is why I wrote her this,

and I want to tell her all of this,
but I’ve never been the best orator,
so I just write it all down because I’m a poet,
and think maybe I’ll send it to her later,

but not now,
because I love her too much to have her stay,
have you ever loved someone so much,
that you just wanted them to go away?

And that is why I say,
maybe I’ll just send it to her later,

but later,
never comes,
life is what happens,
while we are making plans,

there is no future,
there is no past,
there is only,
this exact moment right here,

here,

in this moment,
she’s less than a meter away from me,
only a sleeping cat separates us on our bed,
but we lay worlds apart,

and that is why when they say,
“It’s better to have loved and lost,
than never to have loved at all.”,
I say that saying feels like the farthest thing from the truth…

∆ Aaron La Lux ∆

author of the largest collection of poetry ever published

O prim harrow/
     ******* gomorrah/slashed fists-
raised eyes/joy conjured as alchemic kiss of wood/machine
      I am the child's unfastened bow
      
The diamond bible lay in a meadow formed
     with fragility
      
     (frame of mind as honey & cream & Ubud in June/do not suffer for the Monarch is nearly free from its own funeral, repeating)
      

       Pygmalion & worshipper
Iris ribbon/expander/deceiver
    
      Midnight smoking in backdrop of Lalibela
          Lalibela Opus
           Your thigh burned with Mystic sand

your past of perhapses & sitting on the
flashing rug
     where we listened to flowers speak the Animal language

roots imitate Atlas grasping at our lungs our earth/

the wrath of flesh
   like a youthful mirror
  
I escape the pavement,
  you fold the Sun into Origami
  
      swallowing it/a bird in it's irrational nest
     (I enshrine you with skylines)
          
       we try at last
            for a place of eternal windmills &
baskets which

    entomb the ocean I
tilled for our drowning