Category: 2024 – Spring

Image: © H.S.

Author: H.S.

What can you choose? That is a question.
Here’s another: “What can you choose really?”
The subject of today is choice, which raises a question:
“What are some of the things you can choose?”

Birds can fly. Crows are birds, and so are doves.
Birds can choose to fly.
They can choose to fly in the day. They can choose to fly in the night.
Since crows and doves are birds, they can choose to fly in the day or in the night.

But you and I are not birds. But we can dream about them. I can. You can. You can choose to dream about being a bird (a crow or a dove) and whether you fly in the day or in the night.

There are many other things you can choose.

You can choose your height. You can choose to reach the upper shelf with your height. And if you outstretch your fingers, even higher.

You can choose your homeland. My point of origin is the sky when heaven is blue. And the sun when the sky is red. You can choose your motherland, and also your mother tongue. I chose to write “Things you can choose.” instead of “Brrrrt – tktktktktk pah!” which would be closer to what is happening in my mind.

All these words are fictional, but they are fun nonetheless.

You can choose your number of teeth.
That you can choose.

Making your face looking like your face.
You can choose.

Being bullied in school,
having ADHD,
growing up a boy,
That you can choose.

Being a boy or a girl.
That you can choose.

The shape of your sexual organs.
That you can choose.
You can choose the shape, the scent (or stench) it has, if it is bitter or sweet to the tongue.
You can choose how the veins slithers down the shaft, how hard it is when erect.
You can choose how moist it gets when wet, the aperture of the lips, is it more cauliflower or tangerine shaped?
All that you can choose.

Falling in love.
That you can choose.

You may ponder about choice, but in a poem about choice & being a boy & being a bird, my words bring me to love.

You can choose to fall in love.
Falling in Love with a Franco-American girl who grew in Cannes doing ballet school.
You can choose.

Breaking up with her.
You can choose.
Her breaking up with you.
That you can also choose.

One last thing:
Whether the rock reaches the bottom of the pond when you throw it in.
You can choose.

In a poem about choice my words take me to the colors of the sky, to birds, to sex, to love.
Those words were fun, but they were fictional.
Still, it is enthralling to think about the things you can choose.

Image: © Salomé Emilie Streiff.

Author: Salomé Emilie Streiff

I lie in bed for hours on end. I play pretend with the shadows. They wear your face and if I close my eyes, I cannot see any differences. He is unconventionally handsome. His eyes are the colours of dreams, everchanging. Sometimes brown like the darkest secrets, often blue like true hopes and now and then golden like first kisses. His hands are covered in scars, from glass shards he picks on the floor when every party ends. He cleans the sharp ends to protect the sleeping lovers who crash on couches and every surface that will accept the taste of infinity that lies in their brief arms. His arms are soft like plums and he tastes like candy. I fell in love with the kindness with which he cares for others. I see him in the dried tears of rest after a fight, in the yawn of kids in the park and in the naked trees whose hands touch the skies that wait for their snowy dress. I lie in bed for hours on end. I dance with the shadows with our favourite song on repeat. Do you kiss them thinking it was me? Do you wake up hoping it had been me with the guilt purring on your lap? I write my questions down, worrying about the pace of the earth in our universe. The sun rises before it sets again. He is back. His face looks like yours tonight. He puts the cover over our naked bodies, fixes my hair and lets me fall back in his arms. The sun rises, and in the shadows, I smell your perfume. I could swear it was real. In a sense it was. The space between the worlds, where love is never shared and memories are never frozen. The sun sets,and the earth pursues to chase itself on this never-ending carousel. One day, there will be a little girl. Her laughs will harmonize with yours, and her eyes will look like his. I will spend my nights praying until my breath becomes a psalm. She will grow with the bliss of ignorance that pushes children to look like their parents, she will ache and dance in the same dusty sweat that lives in the bedrooms. She will have your dimples, with treasures hiding behind each smile, but she will follow his steps to the rhythm of the stars. She will always call you dad, but she will spend a lifetime running after him, treasuring each encounter. She will be the daughter of love and dreams.

Image: © Cerqueira, Lot de papillons jaunes et oranges, Unsplash License, Source.

Author: Salomé Emilie Streiff

Like a jazzman playing on a saxophone, she said. I came back in the class. Her dress moves above the scar on her knees. I notice her hands move to the pace of her voice in perfect sync. She continues to dance with her voice, her fingers run a well-executed choreography.   

Hopeful of something else, she said. I came back in the class.

How many of you underlined it in your text, she asked. I came back in the class again.

I went away and came back multiple times during the hour-and-a-half lesson. I failed to listen; I was constantly brought back to my body. The ache in my neck was growing louder. And the rash on my left elbow was calling for my full attention. The dead butterflies in my stomach were moving to the rhythm of my breath. I had in my body the unbearable weight of thousands of corpses. I wanted to cough them out of me, but it was pointless – their minuscule bodies were too decomposed to be ejected. It felt as if we already merged. I was partially dead. I wanted to move on. Have a wake or a funeral or something symbolic to put their tiny existence into a tiny coffin and bury them in tiny holes in a tiny graveyard right under a tiny oak tree. I was ready to write a profound and extremely long eulogy if it was the price to pay to get rid of them. I would try to make it profound and extremely long. I would put on a modest black dress, with a turtleneck and long sleeves, that would stop under my knees. I would not please the gaze of anybody but the grieving police. They would say: ‘What a sorrowful widow’, with a nod of approval. And I would have a tear ready to roll from my right eye, it would stand on the front line like an athlete. I would shake hands with strangers and relatives, I would have a nice word for everyone. ‘Thank you for coming’ ‘It means a lot, thank you.’ ‘Oh, it’s lovely, thank you so much.’ ‘I’m so sorry for your loss too.’ ‘They were so lively, I never thought they would leave.’ I would have the tip of my nose painted red as if I had blown it all night. My face would be puffed. I would stand and walk slowly to the altar, as a bride prepared to say her vows, her hands shaking. I would mention the first encounter I had with them. The surprise, the confusion. ‘Was I sick?’ I would talk about him. His gentleness. The kindness with which he talked. How his eyes caressed the world and captured its beauty. I would probably pause before mentioning his laugh and subtle jokes, the way he styled his hair and how he picked his socks from the drawer. I would not talk about his flaws, about his parents who talked too much or how his brother was their grandparents’ favourite. I would not talk about the friends who died along the way and the loneliness in some of his days. I would not talk about his difficulty in finding the words to express or know his own feelings. I would keep them in my heart, guard them like treasures and they would not hear it from me. Instead, I would stand tall, holding my hand, fingers crossed. I would say how I loved him and how he loved me, I would say how much he loved his friends and family, how he would smile when talking about his nephew and niece, how he would smile at my silly jokes, how he would dance with her head to cinematic music. I would probably tell in silence the memories that are too private to be shared. I would stop mid-sentence without telling its end. Through that silence, people would understand the weight of your love, the pureness of the scar on your hip, the strangled laughs when I awkwardly kissed his belly to mess with him, the intimacy of his hand in my hair, the joy of making love in the sofa of his apartment, the way he mended my soul, and I helped him to grow. I would stop there with silence. I would say that I loved him. I love you in a whisper. And they would all cry. I would use a tissue to blow my nose and touch my left cheek to erase the tears. I would leave my right cheek and her lonely tear to bear witness to my sorrow. If it was the price to pay, I would listen to everyone’s heartfelt eulogy and have even kinder words to the ones who ever hurt him, I would forgive them if it was the cost asked. I would thank God for the moments shared without anger. I would renounce it if it meant they would go away. I would pray religiously and with fervour until the last decaying corpse was out of me. I would be content with nothing. No other true love, just the absence of ache. I would not ask for happiness; peace would be enough. 

What did you underline, she asked. I looked at my text. 

The paragraph about grief and selflessness.

Did you agree with the author?

No, I said. I think there is nothing selfless about grieving. But I loved the metaphor of the butterfly.

Image: © “Dark, Night, Street Image” by StockSnap, Pixabay License, Source.

Author: Iris Low

Sometimes, they only last for ten minutes. Ten minutes in the most tranquil and picturesque of darknesses. I see the light reflecting on the leaves and stems, I can hear my feet stepping on the pebbles on the pathway home, and I can smell an air as fresh as the rain. It truly seems peaceful, only never have I heard silence this loud. The whole natural and embracing atmosphere strangles my lungs, those small, hollow tree branches in my chest turn into thorns. And that one streetlamp that looks like a stage light; I can feel its subtle warmth in front of the empty seats. No one likes clowns. And I stand there, on my empty stage, in front of my empty spectators’ seats and I am cold. I am cold because those evening walks are always cold, even during heatwaves. And as much as I puzzle my brains, I always fail to understand the reason I feel like this. I am surrounded by beauty and nothing particular has happened to trigger it, yet I feel empty. My chest feels like a huge empty mass. But it’s a heavy one. How could that be? So empty yet so crushing? And the shrieking trains that rush by every now and then, interrupting the silence? Well, those are as loud as the voices inside my head.