From my new book, from the chapter Lust. Something I wrote a year ago, but I guess endings are all the same. How does one know if a break up is the specific one that’s going to haunt you for the rest of your life?
How sad it is that the hurt one feels at the beginning of a break-up fades after a while…would we survive intense mourning for extended time?
It makes me wonder what kind of love one has to experience in order to emotionally wear black forever.

When my mother died, my grandmother never wore another bright color ever again, not for the ten years she lived after.
How do you mourn?

Endings
04/2009,
Dubai.

2- I thought of you
your body moving in mine
that trail of caresses I wanted never to end
I took that map to lands you knew not
spoken in languages you knew not
with friends, with love, with myself alone
I thought of you
I took this body wasted by absence
by her presence to lands you cared not for
to the weary images to the ancient homes of our people
to my childhood and the loss of mother
to the grinding old age of my father
to the question that is my future
to the harmony of
love I found in lands separate from you, lands distant
lands you cared for no longer, and
I thought of you when the night crawled into
my bed, and I thought of you
when the sun snatched the dream from my hands
and I thought of you when the stars told me stories
of visions that left me in wonder
and I thought of you when my conversations stilted
and when silence provided an escape
for the sadness
that we ingested
into our bodies of heaviness
into our bodies of hunger
I thought of you

I found protection from your glances, from
this love we never protected from
half chances, and the nights were half ablaze
turgid with thunder
the rain kept me wet in the dry heaves of this battle I retched
and I thought of you as the skies opened
to let the sky wash us clean of this
rancid daily grind
of this inner voice that cuts off my breath
every night
that lets me smolder

And against that
against the slow decay of realization
that I shared your dark skin
with strangers
against the sharp brittle lightening punch to the gut
there is no continent wide enough
no land distant enough
no retreat safe enough
no matter how high the fence
no matter how far the border.