I'm surrounded by couples who no longer notice each other, whose eyes constantly peel off other relationship's clothes. Hungry eyes as Sixties jazz is piped through bookstore speakers; it's a moody Sunday afternoon.
I've been looking forward to Christmas since last year; this time it arrived without fanfare; slipping in through the back door it didn't even disturb the flies. Gaudy-expensive decorations - primary colour red, keywords 'passion' & 'sizzle' - glitter cheaply in the un-spontaneous sunshine.
A good corporate woman at the next table wades through a file thick of emails. She's proud of dedicating all seven days of every week to her career; it shows on her smug, self-satisfied slave-face. (A slender apple core on her table stains itself brown from green and looking back, I've no doubt, on orchard days. My bet is that it was organically grown, just like the once-were-fir-trees that are now printed emails. A whole thick file full.)
It's my turn to have my clothes peeled off: this by a hungry-looking, wolf-like faced young guy over there. Smashing his 'sexy' facade, he reeks of the neediness scratched across his smooth face.
On Thursday night an 80-year woman (riddled with bed sores) died from kidney failure in a provincial hospital ward for one. Next year April she would've been married for 50 years. Last week I'd visited her and prayed that she wouldn't be staying long; '7 score and 10' is a long time to keep on smiling.
'Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage,' croons some velvet-voiced sixties dude (ha-ha, imagine!) over the same speakers (surely this can't be good for book and mag sales?).
If I wasn't in love I'd probably have slit my wrists in the sterile, extraordinarily expensive toilet next-door.
For you, my love, from YOU:
i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it (anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)
i want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
ee cummings
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
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