:: And the caged birds sing ::

Twilight is the pregnant pause in a gentleman's speech, where the ebb and flow of the day's eloquence must die a natural death―indrawn for a breath!―before night falls.

I sat by my balcony and ate a pear and dripped its juice all over my toes. Part of the metallic pink polish is coming off the fourth toe on my left foot. Tired green veins jut rebelliously from my skin―I've got refuge's feet, my Marlboro Man used to say teasingly. (Ugly? I asked? No, just hardworking, he replied with a cheerful laugh)

Twilight is my escape, a fadeout coma from my everyday. I left my proposal unfinished on my laptop. Even as the digital eyes of my computer clock flutter to night, I was determined to enjoy my pear and my old copy of The Old Man and the Sea, and the muted call of rain coming in from the stifled April sky.

***

Stop being so angry, please. Your words are a whiplash soaked in brine, and they leave enduring scars. You know, when I was younger, much younger, back in our old house, I would run and crouch down near my bed whenever you got angry. Dust motes would flutter in down on me through a slant of light. I timed my breath to their flyspeck dance, just so that your voice―so loud, so harsh, so poisonous―would be eventually drowned out by the thumping of my heart. I willed myself not to cry by thinking all of the different shades of blue I could call the sky. I became the mother to countless broken lines: for everytime you turned a grey sky blue, I knew my heart has been burned by you. I cramped myself in that space between the wall and bed, between you and me, between fear and resentment, for years, until I got too big for that space, until we had to move, until your anger got to a point that I couldn't ignore it anymore, not even by timing my breath to the dust fairies.

You see, imagination cannot wipe away reality. I'm so sorry you find us such a burden. But I don't know what else to do make you love, to make you live. il faut d'abord durer―first, one must last.