a book often read

Someone asked me today, what is it that you want?

I paused on my cigarette and felt the smoke burn the back of my throat. The inches of life it must be chipping away, the age it was shoveling upon my skin. Not that I cared in that moment, or do I care now. There is so much that I want in life, the indescribable things, the things that draw you nearer to someone while they speak to you of their life. The feeling you get as you walk out of the house in the morning and see the buildings so solid in their place and lift up into the sky that is peppered with birds.
For so long one can look for it, what ever it is. I have tied myself in balls, so unreachable these thoughts, this thing that we try to capture. But I now ask, why capture it? It only flies away with the slyness of a cat to another. For then we look greenly on others who apparently have it.

Today, I can happily say that I have it, and I do not have it. I can pause and feel that the life rides through me and around me and it is OK.

I do not wish to keep this, as I will only fail.

But have I failed? On a kiss, on a touch from another? No it is me that sets the boundaries that contain me.

I have, regrettably carried on with a particular that I do wish to let go of. Why is it so easy to fall into something and so hard to fall out? This is not a mistake, but something to learn from. Not to fall into something that I know from the moment it reaches my thoughts.
It is an interesting musing. That one knows the moment they embrace someone the way it will end.

It is like racing to the final page of a book while you are standing in the bookshop waiting for your change. Why then proceed to the door? For kicks, for the knowledge that you have conquered that person, that moment?

No, because we have a little faith, that some how we can change something in our own fable. Transform our story to another's, for a happier, rosier life.

I hope one day I will arrive at a place, maybe a cafe in Russia, or in a dive in San Francisco where the lights are dim and the music is loud. And meet a stranger. He will look up and order me a drink with all but a gesture. And I will not read his last line to me, because the book will never be quite finished.