In times of yore, I used to fall for the idea of wanderlust. Stations moving behind night train window, eyes of spouses longing for immediate arrival in every corner of the airport, the smell of salty water slowly vanished within merchants’ old-fashioned perfume scent on cruises—all of them were all the kind of constancy that I kept witnessing each time. And I felt good, as well as alive. It was as if the entire humankind was within my neighbourhood and that all voyages were just routines that kept me sane. It was as if I never befriended the word “hometown,” or “settlement,” or “stay,” not even a chance to know the meaning of.
Tag: daydream
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Puji-puji tentang rumput yang disapa oleh kado kiriman dari langit, pipa-pipa di ujung atap rumah yang diminta bernyanyi riuh bersama anak-anak awan, rambut-rambut yang basah setelah dirangkul tanpa jeda oleh malaikat dari angkasa yang mengharap pertemuan dengan Dewi Bumi. Ruang-ruang di antara rusukku kini dihias dengan krisan dan bakung tempat kupu-kupu bermain hompimpa sehabis gilirannya kilat dan gemuruh.
Setelahnya,
diam-diam kukirim doa dan salam paling bersahaja untuk Sapardi Djoko Damono dan Cholil Mahmud yang telah berkisah tentang hujan yang sentimentil di bulan Juni dan Desember.
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Di udara kita menyaksikan salam-salam berbungkus kertas kado keemasan beterbangan—sayapnya dari gula-gula kapas yang menguar dari uap bibirmu saat mengeja gramatika tentang utopia pada turun salju sebelum subuh—menunggu disambut tangan-tangan gadis yang ruang-ruang di antara rusuknya berisi harap-harap yang kekal mengendap.
Heart & Soul
At the elegiac words of your ode, even ache could be somewhat flawless. Your je ne sais quoi turns twinge into pleasure in disguise, like fading colours of daybreak in the border of the city and the sky. As fine as white and washed-out ivory, but less romantic than the contrast of urban lights and evening horizon. You define pain as if it is just a peach rosebud. A patisserie that is closed every Saturday. A loverboy two thousand miles away promising to be back home.They would eventually grow some happiness just yet, you believe.
Pigeons & Planes
You consist of grains of multihued lights, juxtaposing the dim around the lives surrounding you. You breathe and prudently subsist, to secure and soothe me with your ephemeral presence. You be the bittersweet cherry essence in my daily homeopathic syrup, concealing the resentment of my own disguised fear of mortality. You ensure me felicity through the deception of longing and fortitude, as I seek for more and more perpetual encounters. You and I, we might be the edges of a line shaping ampersand, crawling slowly at secret hopes of meeting one another, while constantly creeping until we end up standing at different thresholds, wishing if only we were meant to be an infinitude.
You.
Now what if.
I might want to be a museum custodian. But you might be just unhappy about me sticking with the past, even trying to collect every reminiscence of it. Seeing me saving lives we all knew have been over for long, presuming so much from them until the boundary between the right now and the yesterdays gets all blurred. Recalling old times when you were not even part of those scenes yet. What if you, enjoy it a bit too much, until the pleasure of living in the moment just disappears because the bygone days comfort you a bit too much, too? What if death and demise excite you? You insist me.
We don’t have beaches today
We don’t own the white sands and beautiful corals to lie around our bare feet as well. We don’t even get to see the gulls coming back home. For today is a treat for tryst, a secret rendezvous arranged so that our longing for serenity at the shorelines wouldn’t hurt that much, because we could always share it for two. A very secret meeting that you yourself would not know you are going to attend one.
Once upon a dusk
Goldish afternoon creeping westward, fell on the bend of your lips. Its tangerine spots landed bashfully there, rustling the shade of your look which suddenly turned warmer. Her brain was a microfilm, portraying every millisecond of pleasing existence in front of her and quietly rescued motile gazes of your mien for later be remembered, only by herself.
Now if I still have to offer you a question,
was it a zsa-zsa-zsu?
When we land on a beach
I’d love to see you in an overexposured photograph where we’re looking at the burning red of sunset and I steal a quick snap of your portrait gazing at the west. Just a dark silhouette of you. In which you don’t have to worry about the possibility that you may be looking all peculiar at that moment, because we could always disguise it in all black. In which we learn that obscurity could somehow be good if we know how to befriend them, wisely.