It’s In The Bag

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During one of our video calls, the boy suddenly stands up and tells me he has to show me something. He disappears from the frame momentarily, then returns with a big black object. He swivels the thing around in several directions to show me what turns out to be one of those huge duffel bags with a metal frame and wheels.

Boy:  I got this from one of the shops down at ISAF. I can use this for check-in luggage. What do you think?

Me:  Baby, it’s huge.  I can probably fit in there.

Boy (chuckles):  Yeah, you certainly can.

Me:  I hope you’re not planning to chop me up in pieces and stuff me in that bag.

Boy (nonchalantly):  No, no need for that. I can just chop your head off and you’ll easily fit in there.

Me:  Um.

See, at my age, dating is no longer that complicated. The most you can hope for is that the guy is not a psycho killer. Or maybe a big enough duffel bag.

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Thirteen/Thirty-five

I go running with a heart on fire

Skinny Love

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For some time now, I have been dancing the dodgy two-step with this guy — an older man who is by turns charming, irascible, and sometimes, just plain tired. Together we skim the surface of things, unlikely conspirators in a plot to eke out a little happiness.

I’m not entirely sure how I stumbled upon this bit of a dalliance, this little preoccupation. There was that phone call in the middle of the night. He made me laugh and yell at him until about 2 in the morning. I couldn’t make up my mind then if I liked his gruff manner. But the next night he called again, and it was hours before the phones got turned off. We call or Skype each other most everyday now. Sometimes he just grunts at me over the phone, at a loss for words. I kind of like that.

Details began to emerge, photos were swapped, bits and pieces got shuffled around to make room for us. This little preoccupation, it passes the time. It consumes me just enough to make me feed the fire day by day, to tend to it just so to preserve the spark. It is what urban kids nowadays call a ‘skinny love.’   A love that’s not fleshed out enough to be substantial, not solid enough to be defined as a sure thing, or as anything.

I don’t mind it, I mean not too much. There is a connection here that I can appreciate, no matter how tenuous, no matter how brief. But, the both of us, we’re not bothered too much by it. There are no unreasonable demands on time, no shallow arguments, no intrusions into privacy, no intense moments of feeling as though your heart will explode. None of that nonsense.

No, it does not eat us up. It is, after all, just a skinny love.

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What Matters Probably

 

what does it matter who we sleep with
the tangle of limbs do not discriminate
arms elbows thighs neck back spine
skin on skin is always so sublime

what does it matter
the membrane doesn’t even remember
the blood that escapes the cut
memory is at best, temporary
at worst, untrustworthy

the fragment i choose is the imprint
of your hand on my skin
the bits of hair freckles nails scars
more real than anything by far

that day you drove five hours
so that I could see the Atlantic
grit of sand in every pore
the water cold the sun low the ocean’s roar

what does it matter if we slept together
what matters probably is that we do not do that

anymore

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Rough Men

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I’ve sat at a table and eaten with ‘rough men who stand ready to do violence on my behalf’ — and I am all the better for it.

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Some Days

 

Some days you sit outside and just look.

The sky can be so blue as to seem elementary. There is snow on the mountains now, but you knew that without having to see it, the sting of cold on the soles of your feet tells you as much when you jump out of bed each morning.

You watch people pass by, walking with their hands jammed into pockets, their bodies bent forward in that curved slouch the spine takes on during winter. You think, my tropical bones will never get used to that shape. You think that, but when you stand up to walk, the curvature reveals itself — how the bones arc inwards, trying to form a shell around the lungs, the ribs about to clutch your heart. The body shields itself, even when one is not aware of it.

Some days though, you see beyond the snow that blankets the rooftops, beneath the thin panes of ice on the ground.

Today, some guy turns in his resignation because he thinks everyone ignores him. He feels unseen. One guy confesses he feels betrayed by the locals, he says they pray several times a day and then send out a truck of explosives to try and blow up a gas station, a guard outpost, a camp full of people. He is tired of saving everybody. Some guys just want to move on to the next high-paying gig, go somewhere warm, where one can earn a decent living and be able to drink Jack-and-Cokes. One guy just paid off the last year of his kid’s college and it’s hasta la vista, see ya. Another left because he’d had enough of the crazy running into the bunkers, all hours of the day. And some guys leave because they want better quality toilet paper.

Five years of doing this, and some days when you sit outside you think you’ve seen it all. Some days.

 

 

This Desire

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I haven’t forgotten
how it feels to be desired.
Though I can’t quite decide
if that is blessing or curse,
and I’m not one for remorse
or small mercies
or false memories anyway.

Anyway, it’s cruel
to just look away.
Desire wants the rapt attention
the blind affirmation
of the widening iris —
the rush of blood to cheek —
it wants its own hubris.

Any which way
but dead, or so they say.
As though the furtive glance
the promise of some romance
that dark little gleam in the eye
is everything, is anything
but a lie.

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Good Morning, Slime

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.Most winter mornings now, I cough up gray slime, the side effect of breathing in all that funky smoke during the night. Kabul burns trash, old tires, dried excreta —anything combustible— in a desperate attempt keep warm during winter. The resulting smoke is so thick and particle-dense, it practically has a personality. At night while asleep, your body ingests it and the next day, holy metamorphosis(!) you expel it in the form of sticky, curdled phlegm. Phlegm, the likes of which I’ve never seen before. And like most things here in the ‘Stan, it is combative… I swear if I’m not quick enough to wash it down the drain this phlegm will launch itself from the floor and attack me.

And how is your morning?

Landscape, With Afghan Sky

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This is my current view, a landscape of blue skies and gray concrete. It’s been set in my mind’s eye, I have been looking at it for close to five years.

The ground is hard, unyielding. We harden it some more, layering it with truckloads of cut rocks, every inch that we can. It is not enough that we already hide behind walls three stories high, we must discipline the earth as well. Imprisoned by rocks, dust, concrete, and steel, I have only the blue skies to remind me of the world that must be still out there. A world where softness is not weakness, where the earth is moist and teeming with life, and where the horizon, unbound, expands freely as far as it pleases.

The Widening Iris

Desire needs the rapt

attention of the widening iris.