Maybe when you come You can meet with Someone else Instead of me
She’ll be slightly taller Keep her hair at shoulder length She will wax her lip hair Wear just the right amount of makeup when she leaves the house Match her clothes with just the right colours Not too much Not to stand out
Shoes with a small heel And painted toenails
She’ll stand still when she listens to music on the streets And leave two coins that clink with a charming ring She’ll be 10 minutes early to the meetingAnd 10 minutes late to the hang And eat salad With Quinoa And shredded chicken She won’t spend too much time on things Or laugh too loud At things That aren’t funny
Or eat with chopsticks Just to make the right noise against the ceramic Or swallow her water loudly I don’t know why I can’t be silent and swallow My throat doesn’t do that You’re the only one who ever cared Or noticed
She’ll have a pretty blue-eyed boyfriend A medium sized room with a double bed that’s not for two people And a desk with neatly arranged drawers And holidays in Italy On the coast Where the tourists don’t go
And visit all of the relatives And remember birthdays
She won’t write cards the week before, only to send them months later She’ll listen to Jack Johnson And Norah Jones And Lauren Daigle
She’ll study architecture About to finish her masters Or childcare Or business Or anything that isn’t music Or painting Or acting Or poetry Or dance
Or maybe she will have the same secrets as me Maybe she uses a fountain pen because her handwriting is otherwise a scrawl And talks to herself out loud And forgets to do her taxes And loses her earrings Or guitar picks Or headphones Or trains of thought Maybe that boy is just a friend who goes everywhere with her So that everybody can make just the right assumptions
Don’t come so close to me That you see that I don’t know what to do with a soap bar When it’s too small to be pretty But too big to not be useful
That I smell like curry Instead of perfume
That my hair is in a bun Because I oiled it
Or that my nails are cut jaggedly In the middle of guitar practise
Or that all the street musicians know me
Don’t watch when I dance freely Or dress myself In bright orange And purple And green And yellow All jumbled together
With nothing to balance it out
When I paint my eyebrows even darker than they already are And read scripture from the wrong religion And kiss for a little too long Or much too long Or with the wrong person
For every second that I tell my story to everybody but you Don’t pay me any attention Pretend it’s not me who complained about being woken at seven Or spoke my opinions Warning,
They are different to yours. My dreams are too big to fit into yours And my colours too saturated I’m a wrongly poled magnet And I don’t know what to do with myself when we see each other But you’ll have to make do With me.
TIME
You and I We play this game with time, I toss, you catch, but it flies So we hold each other instead As if we could hold time in our hands The way I do When I take the batteries out of my bedroom clock So you don’t hear it tick. Instead, you listen to my heartbeat We set our own rhythm You and I, we play this game with time, I toss, you catch, but it flies While we move in slow-motion Last month’s calendar hanging on the wall The lights, speeding around us The lights, brightening and dimming The horizon, glowing We’re like fireflies You and I, we play this game where nothing matters at all Not the deadlines Or the taxes Or the phone calls Or the paperwork Or the marketing Or the running Or the running, or the running We live in an alternative universe Where time passes by unnoticed, you and I Turning life into a game, you and I Building our own reality, Growing our own energy We play this game with time, I toss, you catch, only to find it elastic And in the moments apart you stretch it endlessly I need a slingshot time machine to fly back to you again Because normally I don’t hear my clock And now it echoes from a different building, You and I, we’re left spinning and spinning and spinning
If we could hold time in our hands,
We would not let it play with us.
I toss, you catch, while it crawls,
Last month’s calendar hanging on the wall With me, speeding across With me, brightening and dimming You, far away, glowing, Time plays this game where one second passes each minute Or hour Or day Or lifetime, or lifetime Or lifetime Distorting our reality Confusing our energy Time stretches endlessly Because normally I don’t hear my clock And now it echoes from a different building You and I, we’re spinning and spinning and spinning, If we could hold time in our hands, I would still hold you instead.
You listen to my heartbeat. Bring me back to the present and turn it into infinity, You and I, we play this game with time
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