and I’m still not sure whether I miss you
or the idea of you that
I created and built
out of sparklers
and false promises.
saudade
Definitely
There are good days and bad days
but the last two
have been the latter
tea and words and tears
for breakfast
and a flood of memories my mind
hasn’t remembered in a while
I want to be able to say more
than just I miss him
when they sit beside me
concern flooding their eyes when they notice
my tear-stained face
but I have no words
to explain the insufferable longing
here in my heart
except for
Saudade
the tongue of my motherland
suddenly
comfort seems so distant
a dream my mind must have made up
to get me through today
and then tomorrow
and the day after that
because when life breaks you this way
it’s either live one day at a time
or die.
The in-betweens we create disappear
you learn there’s only yes and no
I will and I won’t
I want you or I don’t
good days and bad
but the last two have been the latter
definitely.
Maybes no longer exist in my world.
Fading Away
It’s weird how memories fade.
Where do they go when they leave?
Up above beyond the clouds? Or do they just hang down below instead?
Underneath the dirt of our dirty soles,
our tired souls…
Who can no longer remember the curve of smiles, the scents left behind in the imaginary trail our bodies made?
To where exactly do our memories fade? And who can say how fast?
Why are some ghosts of our pasts still here, and the others long gone,
Far enough away from our minds that we no longer know who’s alive and who’s really dead. No, not anymore. Not these days.
Where do memories go when they fade?
And what if they stayed instead?
One True Sentence
“Write one true sentence,” she read the advice of one of her favorite authors and then proceeded to scribble “I MISS HIM” in pencil, so as not to feel so permanent.
Her writing had always been honest, though she tried to avoid the feeling of longing for another and the pain that followed once the realization of distance set in. Because that’s the only reason for anyone to ever miss someone else: distance. Whether physical, emotional, or spiritual, distance in any shape or form almost always resulted in that terrible, deep longing we humans can feel. There’s a word for it in Portuguese that captured this feeling perfectly, in all of it’s melancholy glory: “saudade.”
But she had become too used to goodbyes to allow herself the pleasure of missing something that had, until then, been constant. If she didn’t stay in one place for too long, goodbyes were easy to say. They became expected, embraced even. She tried to count in her head the many times she had said goodbye in the past 29 years, to family, houses, friends, favorite places, lovers… but she couldn’t keep track, the numbers and names just started to dance in her brain. Shouldn’t she be immune to missing people and places by now? The difference in being a gypsy like her, she concluded, is that she had to learn early on to carry home in her heart.
Truly, she never meant her goodbyes. They were just words she uttered as she left with new people and experiences in her heart.
Today, she would let herself miss him.
One true sentence. One true feeling among all the others she felt these days.
