#Haiku: The Columbine
Reckless
Drought victims
Seek flood;
Drenching mimes
Drowning;
Overwhelms
Parched cells
Category: #Illness
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The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn
#Haiku; Prickly Poppy
Bitter melon
Ensnares:
Surrender
Embroil
Collude
Confederate
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The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn
#Haiku: Rose-Colored Glasses
On a pink cloud
Red flags look like
Friends; blood is
Wine and
Dawn never
Ends.
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The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn
#Haiku: Medicine: The Foxglove.
Triage:
Discern.
Night class students
Speed to learn
Kiss to
Save; Cut
To burn.
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The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn
#Haiku: Mastering Meditation
Experience
Intimidates.
Silence sees
Compassion,
Understands
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Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn
Powder Mill Rd Thurs 19 Oct 78
Still balancing thank God. Had lunch with dancer
Yvonne – she said she still wakes up having screaming nightmares about Warren (he was killed in a car accident. Faced smashed in by a coke bottle he was drinking at the time. He bled to death.) At least I don’t have those worries. I sleep like a baby. Worked on costumes.
Waiting for Avril to go with me to Interiors. Reread my stuff. Think there’s a great deal to be said for the short, short novel.
Maybe encapsulate them into short stories? But no money there.
I remain unappreciated because of refusal to hook up with some “movement”. Drown rejected. Started dividing the novel into geographical locations – Hooks Lane, Paradise Road. Would make good short stories.
11:30 PM
Awful, awful night. Dancing badly, shoes broke. Rushed
out and bought another pair in my break. Pasties fell off – carpet tape of inferior quality or possibly I sweat too much.
12:15 PM Oct 23
Sitting by phone feeling illogical joy. Wonderful date with Buck – restaurant with lots of wood and Tiffany lamps – just a pleasant, free-flowing conversation. No sex at the end – hug and kiss in doorway. “May I call you?’ I told him yes – invited him to be my date Nov 5 at Shadonna’s wedding. He said he would.
Fri 27 Oct 78
Concord, Mass – the grave of Nathan Bond.
Seems a good place to write – sitting on a gravestone in the sunlight.
So, what was last night like? I arrive to the theology college and another student goes up to get Devon – I overhear him say “There’s a very good looking girl here to see you and I mean very good looking.” Hecame down looking so different with a new silky beard – exclaimed over and over again about my gorgeousness. We went up to his room and were making out on his narrow plank of a bed when the radio played Ambrosia –
– How much I feel. Too much for me! Started to cry and lost a lens!
Now Devon thinks I’m a psycho – which I am. Luckily (for him) and sadly for me psychos are his specialty. Wish he wasn’t so unctuous about it.
When he attacked me with those eyes I had to get myself a drink – broke out in shivers and hives – thought I must black out. He was talking in general ways about what he wants out of life – he seems to be expressing fear he can’t find someone better than me. I did my best to get him back to specifics – even saying a woman can’t propose to a man (Well she could,
But if she proposed to this man she’s never hold him.)
Obviously, he loves me. That question answered. But there are bigger questions. But as much as I deserve love? Seems like not. He’s incapable of making the kind of statement I need him to make. He wants to get a clinical psychology degree and he hinted that I wouldn’t be such a disaster as wife to a psychologist. (Flattering?)
I told him he has a fear of “emotional success” and he agreed. He astonished me by making passionate love to me – I didn’t have to do a thing (other than wear my short pink gauze peasant blouse and the denim gauchos that show my bellybutton) – he couldn’t get my clothes off fast enough. Very satisfying – wasn’t an inch of my body he didn’t kiss – including my heels. I told him my heels had never been kissed before – so he kissed them again – also sought out all the other unkissed places. I do feel satisfied for at least a century. We went out to a Greek restaurant for dinner, then to see The Deer Hunter. Powerful movie. Crazy, just like life. Christopher Walken lovely.
Drove to Concord in pouring rain. Inn is no Night
at the Plaza – more like Early Hardy Boys. Read Violet Clay before falling asleep. Dinner tonight with my cousin Tory – pumping him about Hill School experiences to use in Paradise Road. Buy some wine for tonight and celebrate my own existence.
G’s place – NYC – Central Park West – 30 Oct 78
Why do I do this to myself – visit Genevieve?
I just realized the mirror in her hall is a fat mirror. I did eat a lot of
junk food on this trip but I don’t believe I look this bad. On top of that,
Genevieve’s life is a fat mirror to my life – that’s the truth. We just saw Chabrol’s Violette – we both have a pash for him – but agreed this is not his best – plus the only Chabrol we know of with absolutely no romantic elements. It’s probably something I will end up thinking about a lot – and rewriting in my head – so maybe it’s Ok after all. Wrote a poem for Devon
– Practice Cuts.
Practice Cuts
The dead gush cruelly after dying;
High time to change
Get religion
Have yogic visions
See god
Be a nun
Be a self worth knowing.
Time is gunning for me
Arthritic fingers
Scrabbling at my dreams
Playing old tunes
scratchier, less sensitive.
I’m a body in search of a car wreck
Crime scene consubstantial;
The old deus ex machina
Disaster;
Blood is so good
At erasing uncertainty
Bringing back
A taste for life.
Reduce me, silence
To the essential bones
Of my non essential self
Fortify some other ego
Mine’s tired;
Peel from my eyes the thickened skin of grief
Unstop my ears from the dust of
My own consequence
Free my feet from judging splinters
Life passes from my like a fever in which
I cry out and cry out and yet
No sound is made.
Out
Like the tide
Cauterize
The woof-warp pattern
So plain that even I can see it.
Teach me not to envy
The gulls their mirrored flight
Unmeasured unlike my own
Reduce me to
Unbending bones of my
Essential self
Dark sister;
She;
The soul I was
Before
I became me.
Can’t turn it into a presentable poem – yet – however, it did make me feel better writing it. I guess I don’t like being Devon’s flirtation with damnation. Writing really is the best revenge.
Plush Palace – Thurs 2 Nov 78 8:30 PM
GiGi’s last night onstage. She is very down. Charlie is making her quit because “no wife of mine blah-blah-blah.” Eddy says she’ll be back: can’t find these perks in any other job. I am dancing well.
Apparently, no one but me realizes how fat I’ve gotten.
Both a good and a bad day today. Worked hard on Gift and Drown – sending out query letters – took pkgs to post office –
only to be told a MS has to be bound to go mss rate. I made them look it up in the manual so I won’t have to go through this again.
They treated me like this must be personal – I’m
trying to “catch” them in mistakes – forgetting I’m the customer entitled to service who doesn’t want to pay extra for no reason at all. And the book spells out what services I get – in case they forget. Apology letter from Tory: his girlfriend “out of line” to be so jealous during our paella dinner. She did seem strange but since she’s an artist I didn’t question. I respond with a short note saying I think my questions were just too personal for her ears so I really cannot blame her.
Reading Edmund Wilson’s life like watching a slow-motion car wreck – horrible man.
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Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn
Fri. 25 Feb 77
I fuss, I fume. I shriek and scream. I circle my
desk warily. Cannot get into this awful novel. Stare hard at
the clutching sisters in the Victorian photo for inspiration.
None comes. Instead slapped together a first poetry collection
– In the Vein.
5:20 PM Sun 27 Feb 77
Ryder will be here any minute. Driving straight
through from Pittsburgh because he “misses me so much.”
Flank steak marinating, turnips, parsnips & parsley, tomatoes
& sour cream – everything ready but wine. Too lazy to drive
to the Tick Tock. Day of ecstasy sorting books in new study.
Sections are: crime writing, Victorians, Great Novels, the Occult,
Women Writers, Cinema, Politics, Science, Children, History &
Murder Mysteries. (Move those downstairs.) Hating Orlando.
Why did Bowen write Afterword if she didn’t like the book?
Mon 28 Feb 77 – Broadcast Agency
Bad sex. Sore. Feel like I’ve been run over. Something’s
up with him. Mauled me again in the middle of the night. Guilt?
Surprise visit from landlord – heard about “violations” from
Montgomery County. Ha ha. Obviously only two people living here –
(nothing visible of Mason’s.) Landlord calmed. Says he wants to
sell the place. Would we allow to be shown? I said sure. Everybody happy. Sorry to lose such a beautiful house but it is too expensive for one person anyway.
Thurs. 3 Mar 77
Long talk with Avril about Mason. He is a racist.
She says how is it possible to feel superior to and inferior to someone at the same time? Human condition, I say. Spring wind makes me long to shed my clothes! Poor Ryder! It’ll be halter tops and hot pants the minute temp hits 65. Finally got a V. Woolf poem –
VIRGINIA WOOLF:
The Membraned Sieve
O bliss to be red admiral afeast
Upon a rotten apple in the grass; she dreamed that guiltily
Woke to Leonard bringing milk
Nessa dancing bear-like on the lawn, woke
To pain; cylindrical as seasons
Burning white and burning blue like friends.
The words fell fast, the blood fell faster;
Split the membraned sieve.
She raced the whitecaps out to sea
Parting the waves with her mother’s hand.
Keith and I still talk but he has made no moves. Relief.
Mon 7 Mar 77
Ryder says he talks so much about me associate director
Kerry’s asked to meet me. (He told Kerry he doesn’t deserve
me. It’s the truth!) I said he can’t come to our party at
The Plum – we have no room.
Sex too rough. Experimenting or letting his anger
out? Maybe I’ve stopped lubricating – my body’s ready
to quit even if I’m not. Wants me to wake up and smell
the coffee. Lunch w/Maeve at Carmac’s, me splendid in
orange leather suit, boots, bracelets. Bloody Marys.
I gave her phone bill – also letter from collection agency
about plane bill she said boyfriend paid for. He’s obviously
running a scam on her. She says she found a Bethesda
efficiency $180/month. Had to rush to get back to work –
then saw List of Adrian Messenger with A. Made up writing
schedule for Secaire. But the minute I start I get idea for
another work – story about father/ daughter/ stepmother war–
A Demon Roused. Who’s the demon? Reading The Ring,
the Book & The Poet.
11 Mar 77
Sent home 3:30 because B’Nai B’rith under siege
by terrorists (3 blocks away). Police will tell us when to
come back. Real estate agent leads inspector thru house.
Bad letter from my agent telling me not to try to sell “old” stuff,
write in “new” vein – but she means “like Devlyn”. No more
historicals for me!!!! Got to get out of this stalemated “love”
relationship – when I tax R with things he’s said, he
claims he “doesn’t remember” so we never advance
and I feel diminished. Had to tell him sex is over – I can
see he doesn’t believe me. Must ask for his key back,
that should do it. Dragged Avril protesting to Freaky Friday –
it was worth it. Barbara Harris Chaplinesque. Told Broadcast
I will work only one full day per week – must go back to dancing.
Read Ellen Glasgow’s The Woman Within. Trying to
rewrite Secaire in third person. Unsuccessful. Dreaming
about houses with deep, cool porches but tax people
giving me only $112. Avril crying over Mason’s “hideous brutality”
but she won’t break up with him. Ugh. (Feel my relationship mirrored.)
13 Mar 77
Made love with R for what I hope was last time
(he brought lubricant.) His body no longer a key to mine.
Think I’m started on Secaire Final Draft. God I hope so.
R will sulk for a while, then we’ll “talk”. Prayed for the first
time, to the “life source”. Pray away panic and disorder,
pray for clarity, purity, calm. Beautiful long walk. Heat like July.
Storm burst 4:30. Coffee, orange slices, do my nails. Re-
read Great Gatsby, pitying Fitzgerald the while. Someone
should write this novel from Daisy’s point of view. Exciting
way to get back into Courtney – but I don’t want to put it in the ‘20’s.
Told R I’m dating so had to invite Keith to All Night Strut –
he was pleased. Says he’s not hung up on men paying for everything.
17 Mar 77
Thank God for dancing. a fe moments of complete bliss each evening.
Everyone fussing about Scenes from a Marriage. It is excellent.
Reading good bio Dorothy Thompson. Novel going swimmingly –
suddenly feel fearless. Sex scene perfect. Why elaborate?
Why elucidate? Need to be out of this house June 1 – can do,
but should I return to dancing or take summer off? Undecided.
Mon. 21 Mar 77
Wish I hadn’t called Ryder but I did. He was very injured
by my sex comments. I said I was very injured by the sex. (He says he fears me.) Goddamit feel like turning in my phone if this is how
I am going to behave. Watched Upstairs Downstairs, Monty Python.
Felt better. All Night Strut amusing – Keith invited me to Voyage of the Damned. (He pronounces it Dam – NED. In a class by himself after all?)
Unfortunately not feeling the chemistry. Trying to take what pleasure I can in high heels and see through blouses. Could we just date? Secaire solid, beautiful, disturbing. Avril says its very exciting. Found a shack in Virginia for $200/month. But maybe I have to flee this state to eradicate R from my soul.
23 Mar 77
Voyage classically awful. Majestically, stupendously awful.
Bad date. I talked too much. Goddamit dating’s awful. Like those endless “teas” we suffered through in Girl Scouts. Sex is less work (not that I indulged. He has a repellently gooey corpus.) He took me to Alfio’s for dinner! Scene of R’s & my first date! Couldn’t resist telling him I used to dance at Shalimar next door. Keith invited me to his house in Potomac. I said nix. Dumped on doorstep with closed mouth kiss.
Shudders of relief. Walked in on Mason in a rage over my “betrayal” of Ryder!! I said he’s dating other people. Mason said but he loves you!
I didn’t say his love is a septic condition. (Because Mason’s love is also a septic condition. Poor Avril.) Happily to bed with Becker’s Escape from Evil.
2 April 77
Crisis at work sending my first cablegram to France – Keith showed up looking extremely handsome. Terrible suspicions novel is bad.
Off to splendiferous bash – literary party. Met Chuck Kornowitz,
editor from Athenaeum. Acted interested in my work – where can we have dinner? Took him to the Serbian Crown. He is NOT interested in my work he is interested in me. Damn. Told me the most erotic encounter he has ever had was with a stranger in an elevator! Feels sex with complete strangers has not yet been fully explored!!! Not by me that’s for sure.
He drove me home, insisted on walking dogs with me, holding my hand! Weird but I don’t want to turn him off entirely. (He’s old and ugly – looks like a Gila monster.) Fighting the impulse to call R and yell at him. Boy am I sick. Poor Keith does not know I need him for a rabies shot. Against hair of the dog?
Fri. 8 Apr 77
Agency offers me over-time while files are reorganized. More cash. We celebrate Avril‘s new job as fake nurse at urology office. She hasto buy a nursing uniform so patients won’t know. (Doctor not willing to pay over minimum wage.) Still, it looks classy. Went to Black Tahiti where I had sweet & sour shrimp. Turns out I need to stay away from booze because called You Know Who came right over and we indulged in mad passionate sex all night long. R was delicate and gentle – brought me to the edge several times before finally pushing me off cliff. Showoff.
Talked about me like he’d read my work. (Praising it.
Thought I’d be pleased.) Then told me he’d “busy” this weekend.
Steeerike three! Tragically I need a guardian, conservator AND a
bodyguard. (Keith doesn’t have the build.)
Chloe apologized for bad writing workshop with dinner
after at Armand’s. My advice to writers – learn what kind of writer
you need to be and get on with it. Found myself getting defensive about Devlyn – if I don’t want to write “that way” again it must mean there was “something wrong” with it!!! Bad advice from Ted Hughes :
“When you find yourself using someone else’s voice, stop at once.”
Nothing ventured nothing gained under that theory. This is not making me eager to hit the “literary events” as Chloe advised. The “noise” interferes with my working mind.
Hostile questioning from Mom and Dad who don’t know
why I don’t move closer to Devon!!! They say “playing the field” is
cheapening my brand. Reading Mrs. Starr Lives Alone.
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The Demon Lover – a play for two voices by Alysse Aallyn
6. ENTREGARME – SURRENDER
EVAN
I am utterly becalmed.
What I dread most is silence,
The latest form of impotence.
I need stringing up and tautening.
This is the
Revenge of love. Its revenge on me.EVA
I am suffused with love because I am free.
My work becomes our child,
Our extension. Immortal. Still,
Something vanishes when you’re not there.EVAN
Elayna broke her hip.
How irreplaceable she is to me.
Our brand of married happiness is entirely unsung.
I shrink to leave her even for a day.EVA
I’m sorry it wasn’t fatal.
Am I so dispensable to you?
You love no one. If you turn against me
I’ll die in a week because
I have no one looking after me.EVAN
Turn against you! Agonizing!
In spite of the hangover of humiliation
I broke down all reserves so we could be together.
A very happy day and I was sorry to leave you.EVA
Wed & sad.
Past distress muffled by age & habit.
Today we meet formally as if at a garden party.
A promise unfulfilled.
Miracles happen but
The gift of love is guilt & pain.EVAN
You looked so ill
I was nagged by fear I bored you.
I long for the happiness of old age,
Guilt free, pain free, fear free.EVA
I invited Elayna to lunch.EVAN
I am not best pleased.
Your ghost will haunt me till I die.
The day you come to like each other
It will be poison to our love.Elayna rarely admits depression.
I have had not just love but loyalty.
You force ruthlessness.
It is a good thing your throat is sore
Or you would never stop talking.EVA
Are you sending me your signet ring?
I want something solid to remember you by.
A last communion.
Dodging death, I fight off this
Paralyzing loneliness.(EVA fades away. EVAN is alone.)
EVAN
Is the flaw in love a flaw in me?
I never should have married.
My heart jumps with pain like a hooked fish.
I am rudderless. Upon your death
My ring comes back,
All your contrivances revealed.Now that you are gone, I find you everywhere.
It’s hard to take in the fact that
We will never see each other again;
Never, never, never.
You are gone from me forever.I walk the streets and weep.
Is this delayed shock? Boredom or despair?
I will never cease to feel this pain till
I cease feeling anything.
For the last three nights, I dreamed of you.Did I anger you, neglect you?
It’s too late to pray –
I await your final book with horror.
I need to know I was your life.
Please come back one last time
For just an hour.
If you ever thought you loved more than I
You are now
Revenged. -
The Demon Lover – a play for two voices by Alysse Aallyn
VOLCADA – CAPSIZED
EVA
Allen’s buried.
Without husband, I re-experience my youth.
Oh, the bafflement of the young!
I broke off my first
Engagement because I loved too much
And cast about for a spouse I could
Control. I believe you did that, too.EVAN
I experienced our parting as unbearable.
I had to run away –
Your rush of talk was like someone bursting into tears.
I felt like an executioner robbing you of sleep.
Without you
My nose began to bleed and
It’s been bleeding ever since.
We must love each other less to become more tranquil.EVA
I am a witch and you should fear me.
I glow with contempt and boredom and fury.
I don’t understand why
I can’t experience life by your side.
We share the same senses,
The same vein of joy.
Our life together is timeless, continuous.EVAN
Your letter fraught with dynamite.
I can never be alone, it is me and the gin bottle.
I am home nowhere now – except with you.EVA
Please don’t get yourself into a state –
But Edgar has proposed, forcing me to face the fact
That I literally cannot live without you.EVAN
I dread you will succumb to Edgar.
You called him “sweet” and “cozy” and “brilliantly entertaining”
And I am none of those things. Did you bewitch him?
I ask in my persecuted voice.
It would be your ultimate justice, sending me to hell.
We lose each other by inches.
Aren’t we doing that already?EVA
I can’t show Edgar the brutal candor
Behind my loving kindness.
He mistakes the hostess for a person.
I arrange my flowers in symbols of you
And everyone’s too stupid to notice.
To bed alone again tonight.
I wish Elayna would die.
Then we should be equals.EVAN
I must refuse your guilt.
I feel a shift in the angle of vision
Further from you than ever.
A foreboding so final it seemed the end.
Your pleading for our life dissolves my will.EVA
I am gnawed by an aching hopeless wish.
Loneliness leads to breakdown,
Becomes dementia. I batter
Around the rooms of this castle,
Brightly-plumaged,
Knocking into furniture,
A tragic bird who’s trapped indoors.
Even dizzy with drink I maintain the frigidity
Of an Edwardian hostess
Intolerant of scenes at meals.
Without you life’s a half-lit room.EVAN
I’ve become a character in your melodrama
An absurd scalawag of romantic vice.
Let’s reject this
Hopeless dilemma.EVA
What could be more beautiful than our ten days in New York,
Among perverted architecture.
No loss of illusion there, rather an increase.
I’m in the midst of a dreary financial crisis,
Having breakdown on my feet.
I hope I don’t sound too shocked and sad.
You are life to me as nothing is.
My fingers still tremble,
Touching you after 17 years.EVAN
This is the Eva I first met, first knew, first loved.
We waited it out and didn’t lose each other.
I was sane or mad to doubt you & myself.
We are like two people sweating blood
I dread losing you
But Elayna’s power still holds me.
One of you may do me harm.EVA
Thanks for the cash,
I hope it doesn’t embarrass you too much.
You are a reviver and a balm.
We shall be in Paris together before we die.EVAN
If you want me to be unselfish, let me be unselfish.
You are my greatest friend. I’m
Trying to keep off the drink while you’re here,
Otherwise I know I’ll wreck everything.
Three manhattans makes me crazy.
Your feverish cheer does not seem solid.
Is this the wreckage of our love?
Once frightened of your clinical eye
Now I’m more frightened of my own.
I’ve matriculated in
Your fearful university.EVA
We sheer away in horror
Scenting fumes of evil
As we lose control.
Defeat and exhaustion, alarm and despondency.
Demoralized and sad.
Slam down the lid on pain and resentment:
I have taken against your family.
Let’s dance. To sit
In silence denigrates our love.EVAN
My heart aches for you.
We talked for the first time in weeks
About hurt and resentment.
I could manage my life if it weren’t for you
And you could manage yours if it weren’t for me.
You infect me with your despair and I flee to my wife
To release the pressure.
Her quickening influence works my imagination.EVA
I hate that you travel the world without me.
You pervade that place as God pervades our hearts.
I obsess that you’re in places where I’m not.
I could not live without seeing you. Yet
Our visit may turn sour.EVAN
Everything except your beautiful self rusts
Or dies or goes away.
My love only seems dead;
it’s alive underneath. If you die
I shall never forgive you.We need ideas that are less about ourselves.
EVA
My rage is based on my assumption
Of togetherness and my
Secret fear you’re being got at when
We could be so snug together.EVAN
I hurt Elayna tonight
But there’s no help for it.
She cares for me and I only care for a life apart.
A clean break, an amputation
Makes me frantic and guilty.
She says we have a happy marriage only because
She willed it. This smell of death and decay
Makes me long for sex.
Could you help me find a girl – any girl you choose –
Or will you call me a sex mad degenerate?
Panic makes my hands shake.
I thought of Elayna and I wept.EVA
I received your sad, wild letter.
I accept that you can’t free yourself.
Do you accept it?
I feel so very near you.
I accept that you make sex
Desperately with strangers –
Do you accept it?
Can anyone love such a cold-blooded person?EVAN
How silly I am, I thought
I reconciled to our ending,
Expecting a collapse of tension & illusion.
But it’s a prospect I just can’t face. -
The Demon Lover – a play for two voices by Alysse Aallyn
4. CALESITA –THE MERRY GO ROUND
EVA
Did I leave my diary behind?
Don’t read it, not that you would.
It’s anaphrodisiac. I am filled with envious admiration
For the way you spend your time.
It’s an incentive to work, being alone.
Diplomats are never lonely.EVAN
My bed gets so icy in the small hours of the morning –
I am losing interest in sex.
Perhaps I am already part of the spirit world.
I am in limbo and will never escape this place.The teenager remains alive in me, I have a
Panic fear of conformity
So I cast myself as the elderly rake.
I fear I’m the bore –
Marriage gets me down.EVA
When you go on and on about yourself
You’re a man I don’t recognize.
I prefer your adolescent self.
The man of the house should be a free agent.
A respected prowler
Never lonely, housebound,
Eating baked beans and drinking stewed tea.EVAN
In other countries women
Are less bossy and more decorative.
You are jealous of my life –
I am jealous of yours.EVA
Ah the pain of your reproach!
Not seeing you would kill me.
I live for the memory of our every moment.
I wouldn’t give a damn if I died tomorrow.EVAN
This is the letter I would write you if I dared,
if I weren’t frightened by the cancer
Of your wife-hatred.
I am overworked, wrung out.
Possessed by you.You make me live at the pitch of anguish.
Our love has roots in good and evil,
It lives in the darkest places of our natures
Shall we end by destroying each other?
You have the deadlier weapons.EVA
I do have a bad effect on people.
Guilt, conspiracy, love,
I cannot breathe without them.EVAN
Boredom, dissipation, remorse,
And apprehension– I can’t escape this obsessive cycle.
Beneath the controlled surface of my mind
Opportunities to be frenzied are endless.
I’m afraid of saying something ruthless which many stick.EVA
This place is full of you.
I can no longer look at hyacinths
Gratitude for our happiness chokes me.
The restlessness of pleasure going to waste.
Missing you is like an illness.EVAN
If there’s a worm in this bud
Who is the corruptor?
Your insights are so powerful they alter mine.EVA
I believe we should exchange rings.
Is this a faux pas? Would your wife object?
I need something in case you die of your itch or
I fall out of an airplane.I wonder why Elayna’s throat won’t heal?
I believe she is ice-bound.
Sealing you away from life.EVAN
You witch, you have
Frozen poor Elayna’s throat.
I begged you not to. You make all
Suffering physical.EVA
Elayna’s frozen her own throat –
I wish you’d see it.
Depression is hallucinatory.
Guilt and sorrow undermine my confidence,
I refuse to give them credence.EVAN
I’m grateful when we talk calmly,
Our fearful scenes seem so long ago.
I’m sure the panic of youth has played its part.
I used to hope you would love me less over time
But now I think we love each other equally.EVA You are so near me I feel we are one person.
I feel you now beside me.
I will make you real.EVAN
I feel your longing
As I fear your signaling.
I owe you happiness
But I can’t express it.
We must believe life is as beautiful as music
Says it is.EVA
The illusions we cultivate are
A form of courage.
Forget my deficiencies
Find amusement in the worldly game.
Alysse Aallyn 