my purpose has grown a bit unclear
if that is not straightforward enough i don’t know what is
but you know i am never an open book so you decide not to accept everything as it is
which is very wise
i walk like a native through avenues that not long ago i saw for the first time
but the skies are amazingly blue
i speak in an accent nobody understands, not even those whom i try to imitate
but the air is amazingly fresh
i dream in a foreign language that i have known since childhood
but the smiles are amazingly genuine
i try to reach you
by sending both short and long messages
containing obscure phrases
and terms i know both of us
will only pretend to comprehend
but you might never know that
i feel a contraction in the muscles of my cheeks whenever you let out a laugh thousands of miles away from me
i feel a twitch somewhere in my insides whenever somebody or something silently pierce your dignity
in a land where my mother and grandparents were buried but which has now become a part of my dream holiday itinerary
i have become sharper than ever
i have become someone you know i would eventually become but you just do not think it would happen this quick
i have new secrets now
i have liked many wonderful things without sharing them with you
i have taken thousands of pictures but you were never in one
i have cried many nights
under the thing translated as blanket where you are but actually known as duvet where i am
i have conversed many times
over a pint of what is understood there as beer but is coined here as lager
and suddenly the lyrics to every song i hear illustrate clearly
all the vague emotions that took me twenty-nine lines of melodramatic ramblings to even begin to decipher
surprise surprise the band is called the postal service
i have four boxes
full of my summer clothes (ha! it was not until i got here that i started to classify the items in my wardrobe according to the season!)
and some trivial treasures that would always remind me of the year-long pseudo-independency
all sealed addressed and ready to be shipped across the waters
of course, i did not forget to put in them
artefacts of my love for you, proofs that i have never let you out of my mind all the while we are apart
so will you let me know when you receive them?
but sadly i know i am nowhere to be reached
standing still in my new room in my new flat
wiping the drops of water off my window i realize that they feel cold
for the temperature behind the glass must be lower than my room’s
it is terribly apparent that the days of clear blue sky have come to an end-
exchanged by a never-ending sequence of long afternoons that does not feel very long at all
all i have now is chaotic visions of familiar faces, each of them bears different ethnic traits from the other,
of familiar furnitures,
of familiar means of transportation,
of familiar lingos,
of familiar coffee shops,
and of that familiar bottled iced tea
which remind me so much of home
while the word itself
stays ambiguous
sometimes i would rather see the ugly green walls of my old room when i wake up in the morning
sometimes i would rather be standing at that ‘unofficial’ bus stop, my hair is all messy and my eyes are all teary, when the cold does not even bother me at murray place
sometimes i would rather receive a warning call from dad when i am out pretending to have the time of my life at a nearby club
but all the news you ever sent to me was of loss and decay
while i know the sun is always up over there
i guess no matter how stubbornly the world insists that it only knows one sun
the one that i have here is different from the one you have there
i know you know i know you know that it is
the truth
now have i made myself unclear?
barnton street, 22 october 2005