Stealing Soup (A Poem?)
Seoul. 16.08.21
It’s not that I do not like the sweet sounds of Drake.
Or, the smell of you, burnt pain au chocolat air
which has folded itself quite neatly into
my not-too-fresh but not too shabby
quarantine blankets.
(And I use the possessive as if this burnt air — quite toxic, and not too sweet — were close and as yummy as a lover in sheets some kind of ‘we’ or ‘us’ has bought and washed and spread. Alas. Importantly, however, these sheets are still very soft and very delightful to sink into.)
But, a respite from 3 minute songs — many of which make me feel oh so very good:
Until they didn’t.
(But maybe, it (as in the ‘didn’t’) was actually the news, I think. Or maybe, the waiting for it (somewhere in my belly, as I stretched and paced and read and cooked), and then the happening which is the other side of the world awaking (and it is always exciting — and beautiful — to feel, this other side of the world coming into life again…) …And yet, I guess feeling this surge of waked-ness, even when the things I now had to show for all the daylight I’d already lived felt good, but in the same breath, or rather, feeling this other surge, I think that someplace, I wanted another sunrise. Or, the energy to match this prepping-up, as I’d crested the midday undulation on my way to winding-down…
Even though this morning
— beautifully jolted out of bed because I could not hear the alarm (the phone was dead)(and, ‘jolted’ because I thought I’d slept until noon with my surgical-mask-for-eye-mask and singular-ear-plug-in-case-the-murderer-comes-in-and-is-that-him-or-a-water-pipe? [and this was a question which demanded attention]…)(…but, ‘beautifully’ because it was actually only 7.30am) —
when I saw the bright sunrise (very crisp, very hot, very white) after this night during which I had let my insomnia run its course, peacefully dreaming through my soft (recurring) day-and-night-dreams which, actually, and finally, though they took their sweet (very sweet) time turned to a slumber which lasted until the morning,
I took such joy that in the moment of this crisp awakening while the other side of the world must’ve been tip-toeing to sleep, or scrolling that day’s last scroll, or doing untoward things in beds alone or together, I could think of them, deeply, (even with a pang that the ‘early’ time I’d woken up at to catch a friend before she slept, was not early enough, like those calls which had cut through lunchtimes, and so, in turn, had to be cut, but, in the same breath, there are many ways to feel love and to say I love you, and to hear of places and happenings and feelings, and to exist in the spaces where we are fortunate to choose and breathe and call and to wake and sleep at times we choose, as we wish), and so, (a “pang” thus being quite accurate? Or,?)
I breathe in sunlit air, and find, in this balancing act, a need and desire and comfort to take solace in the night as night and the night as the day, and in that this night is another’s day, and so on and so forth.
Though Drake
can be nice too, it was nice, too, to need to feel these thoughts
In silence.
And though I was expecting quite a hot and clammy air
As I went to the outside (some sort of city, clanging, bells in the distance “silence”)
Feeling all these feelings and thinking of slumbers in unison and not and of my own last night
— so restful this time for a heart that has sometimes beat very hard, or eyes that have cried, or legs that have shaken (very fast, and uncontrollably), and a body which has panicked, and which is yet so lucky and full, and fed, so, guilt (isn’t that “sometimes” lucky)—
as I stepped out here, into the wild, fake grass, where earlier today I’d seen a dead flying cockroach* the size of my hand lie belly up, gray, roasting in the sun, (I think a cockroach, that is, but big and gray and dead nonetheless)
It was jut so particularly nice to feel,
Without expecting it
This warm air and this persistent breeze — or, more accurately, something a little bit stronger than just a ‘breeze’ —
And to see the moon,
And to just sit and watch the red lights on towers and the white lights on towers be shunted on and off, as if they were the spectacle. The clouds, too, and their light pink leaving the moon very white in the purple on the other half of the sky
And to smell the broth (or soup?)
Flying up from below so strong it made me wonder what the city tasted like beyond it?
But, the little hairs in my nose drank it in
And in this way, on this little balcony, looking at the sliver of moon
In this never-quite-dark sky
I tasted through this salty air
A home in this city
And not quite like a thief, (I don’t think), but like a hungry traveller,
I felt blessed to taste this potage of love (or maybe not even, and the French here is definitely incorrect…but…)
And I saw the neighbours I’d only heard, for the first time.
And then it started to pour, rain.
And we’ll find our rhythms, I know, in different times and places. We are never far far away, truly (that’s all Shrek and NeverLand). And I think maybe a lot of the why is because the heart — even the heart unknowing — can only beat easy on love, with love…
Even snatched in the air, in the form of the hot entrails of a soup, sometimes the heart subsists in the love of another. And on the loves that have made it a self-fulfilling and self-sustaining little thing.
Even held on a screen, the words of hearts, as they wake. And it is nice, actually, to be here awake, watching (or not, perhaps I’m watching the red and white lights…), as they do. Little words from big hearts, coming sometimes after days, weeks, sometimes in a lovely quick ring, or sometimes every other minute, making the screen go ping ping, and, they all make this little heart go ‘ping’ too.
A modern, big but small world type love, I think.
And now I will get to making my own soups taste dreamy, for the inadvertent sniffer. Now, especially, that that murderer has been chased away by the smell of a dying pain au choc…
