The world was wax, hers to mould.

Standing barefoot in my kitchen, tiptoed...for the floor is so cold. There is a pale fur stole draped across my shoulders, for no reason in particular. One hand occupied with a simmering stovetop--eggs for my roommate and I (breakfast at 1:30 pm), the other leafing through a frayed book of old Cohen poetry. Here is the best one so far--

"Beneath My Hands"

Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.

Wherever you move
I hear the sounds of closing wings
of falling wings.

I am speechless
because you have fallen beside me
because your eyelashes
are the spines of tiny fragile animals.

I dread the time
when your mouth
begins to call me a hunter.

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.

I want them
to surrender before you
the trembling rhyme of your face
from their deep caskets.

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want my body and my hands
to be pools
for your looking and laughing.

(Cohen, Leonard)

---

Disarray; how come there is clothing stranded everywhere it doesn't belong, water in rivulets all over the floor, stale coffee standing frigid in cups and why is there this pain behind my eyes? I think that is it nothing, really. Just another Saturday, another day skimmed off the calendar like a tree shedding its leaves. My limbs crave warmth, yet I can't see it happening. Candles ignited in the daylight feel startlingly nice. I always thought that fire was a thing of the night, but in the pearly afternoon sky they are very lovely.

In my mind, I wander the streets of a different city...beat a separate heart...feel a breath altogether not my own. It is part imagination, part game. Part real. My lips speak a language I've never known, and everything is the opposite of parallel. It's funny, and indecipherably sad at the same time. Stepping, stepping. I don't know these feet but it seems they recognize me as their own.

Here is the new black: Stop thinking and start feeling.

I can't think of words any more fitting to part with.
With love,
RB.