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Thanks for your interest and all your kind comments ... take care ...

 

unfinished stories

unfinished stories

on the platform
at the train station
over the noise of jumbled languages
and the howls
of crying children
she curses at him and leaves
with an angry turn of her head
and a hand that pulls away from his shoulder
and flicks at the emptiness
of her life without him
angry and hurt
she pushes her way
through the collapsing air
of the moment
somehow ominously wet
against her cheeks
where it clings like an unforgiving acid
eating its way
through the future

he watches her leave
smells the scent of her perfume
escaping in ghostly vapours
feels the imprint
of her arms
which just moments before
were tight around his shoulders
hears her voice
drifting into silence
shudders at the sight of
her long coat
trailing behind her
like a wedding veil
and he closes his eyes
turns off every sense
to memorize
her face
her scent
her touch
her voice
puzzle pieces fitting together
in an image of her beauty
and seals it in his heart

before the sun sparks light
into the summer sky
she hurries through the doorway
and down the walk
but catches only a glimpse
of taillights already fading
down the boulevard
towards the irreconcilable corner
and into an unforgiving unknown
so she holds onto a lamppost
steadies herself with one hand
and aiming
with as much strength
and certainty
as she can muster
she fires the revolver of love
at the disappearing car
but she is already too late
and her shot
though straight and true
somehow runs wide
somehow misses its mark

he stands by the bed
of the little girl asleep
and his rough hand reaches
for her soft cheek
which he strokes gently
in the dark of this
his last night listening to
the easy cadence
of her quiet breathing
and if he thinks she is waking
he freezes
into the immovable bronze outline
of something still and inanimate
until he is sure
she has returned
to the steady rhythm of sleep
when he whispers her name
at the end of a final blessing
and steps from her room
and from her life
forever

she remembers something special
something that twitches its way
like a ghost
out of the moonlight
perhaps the way he stood by the fire
or the way he looked at her
across the kitchen table
his soft dark eyes piercing
the very fabric of her skin
and sending her into a strange reverie
of helpless joy
until just as suddenly
the moment is gone
and she putters with the trinkets
set carefully on the mantle
next to the photograph
the only part of him
left unchanging

he writes to her from faraway
lines of hope inked
in gentle words
to ease the wounds of her fear
and he writes loving phrases he hopes
will divide the distance between them
by half
and then by half again
until his hand stutters
and his faith stalls from exhaustion
but before he collapses into ever-sleep
he turns the pages over twice
and seals them in an envelope
which he holds fast against his heart
and brushes against his cracked lips
that leave behind the bloodied seal
of a last kiss

the wintertime is coming
and the frost on the windows
tells unfinished stories of love and loss
of the brightest hopes
and the darkest sorrows
of disappearing yesterdays
and impossible tomorrows
if only it were a dream
a nightmarish sleep
from which we could wake
but the truth is too cruel
too impossible to escape
always returning in a river of sighs
when the best of love
disappears
beneath the flood of
unconditional goodbyes

© Kennedy James. All rights reserved.

 

Make A Wish ...

Make A Wish ...

Make a wish.

Go ahead. Don't be shy, don't be a cynic or a skeptic, and certainly don't sit there on your itchy derriere and get all pompous by saying something like, "Hmm ... that's just stupid."

Make a wish.

After all, you probably don't realise it, but you're making wishes all day long. You wish you had slept longer, you wish you still fit into last year's clothes, you wish you didn't have to work, you wish you had someone who loved you, you wish you had someone who didn't love you quite so much, you wish you had more time to yourself, you wish you didn't have quite so much time to yourself, you wish for this, you wish for that.

The world is just full of wishes.

Some of those wishes even come true.

But wishing never really depends on whether or not your wishes come true.

Wish after wish can blow up in your face with a ~poof, and, yes, it may seem that, heck, what's the point of wishing if there's no payout. Oh well, that's just life, isn't it?

No matter how disenchanted you get, you will always be wishing for something. It's probably some kind of cosmic law that human beings wish, wish, wish. Nature of the beast, I think ... something like that.

Of course, some things you wish for are simply impossible to achieve. You can't wish for immortality and honestly hope that your wish will come true. You can't wish you were fifteen years old again and expect to wake up tomorrow with a runaway case of acne. You can't wish that what has been done could be undone — like you can't say to someone, "I wish you were never born." OK, you can say it, but God forbid, it's not going to come true.

By the same token, it's never a good idea to wish for something that depends on the actions of another person. For example, you can't say to someone, "I wish you loved me." Hell, that person either loves you or doesn't love you. You might as well say, "I wish you weren't you." What you have to acknowledge is that maybe you have the wrong someone. Cripes, wish you could find another someone who might love you the way you dream of being loved.

You see, you can wish for possible things. You can wish for happiness, you can wish for health, you can wish for some extra cash, you can wish for a night of wild sex, maybe even a ménage à trois — all these manner of things are attainable. But here's the rub ...

You have to remember that you are a partner in your wish. There's no magic genie in some vinegar bottle at the back of your fridge who will simply plop the fulfillment of a wish on your plate. Whatever you wish for involves you. Only you and what you do can make a wish come true. Only you and what you do can start a chain of events that will lead to ensuring that your wish actually shows up and becomes a part of the reality that is your life.

Say you wish that you could lose 20 lb. That seems reasonable enough and is certainly possible. However, you have to participate in making that happen. If all you do is sit around on the couch eating cupcakes all day, you're probably not going to get your wish. You might even get the opposite, and instead of losing 20 lb, you may actually gain 20 lb.

Here's my point. You can't wish your life away. You can't wish for this or wish for that, unless you are honestly willing to be a part of the process that makes even the wildest wishes not just fantasies, but real-life possibilities.

So make a wish, and then make that wish come true ...


© Kennedy James. All rights reserved.