What will it cost you?

"If this is love, if there is even the possibility that this is real love, what do you care? What will it cost you to live it out? Too much? Everything? Now that it has presented itself to you, could you dare to imagine turning away from it for anything or anyone?" 

She lit a cigarette and pulled at it fiercely. She had already finished talking.

"Did it ever happen to you?" I asked. 

Her cigarette was nearly a stub by the time she answered.

"Yes, I think it did happen once to me. But I was afraid the sentiments would change. I was afraid of some form of betrayal and so I walked away. I betrayed it before it could betray me. And maybe I thought life inside that intensity would suffocate me. So I chose a sort of pleasant, safe compromise, an emotion less than passion and more than tolerance. Isn't that what most of us choose?" she asked.

By Marlena de Blasi in "A Thousand Days in Venice"

Reductio ad absurdum

He pulls up anchor
to this dimension
and drifts
untethered but bound
to an unclaimed continent.

She dives
deep into the galactic
synaptic sea
separated
by potential
of wake and dream.

They have found
not the land of could
or should have been,
in this embracing
of soul and lips
and hips and scars.

This is a tale
that eats its snake,
Never odd or eveN.
He and she are cupids'
arrow in paradox*,
hearts moving impossibly
in a parallel rhythm.

*Reference to Zeno's Arrow Paradox and the Quantum Zeno effect.

© "Neon Veil" (All rights reserved)

Snake - Copyright Free Images

We'll be fine
Lost lyrics

White Eucalyptus

White Eucalyptus © Jennifer Phillips

A blessing and a curse

I am feeling while trying not to feel.

Everything just feels like a prelude - 

as if all that has gone before

was not really real...

That like a flower only partially opened,

I need you to truly bloom.

A blessing and a curse.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Partially opened - Copyright Free Images

Burn the garden

Dew

"Walking over dew-spangled grass is like walking across a carpet of jewels."

by Jennifer Phillips

Dew - Copyright Free Images

Holding up the moon

"Living as a couple never means that each gets half. You must take turns at giving more than getting. It's not the same as a bow to the other whether to dine out rather than in, or which one gets massaged that evening with oil of calendula; there are seasons in the life of a couple that function, I think, a little like a night watch. One stands guard, often for a long time, providing the serenity in which the other can work at something. Usually that something is sinewy and full of spines. One goes inside the dark place while the other one stays outside, holding up the moon."

by Marlena de Blasi in "A Thousand Days in Venice"

We have lost even

We have lost even this twilight.

No one saw us this evening hand in hand

While the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window

the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops

Sometimes a piece of sun

burned like a coin between my hands.

I remembered you with my soul clenched

in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?

Who else was there?

Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly

When I am sad and you are far away?

by Pablo Neruda

Piece of sun burned like a coin © Jennifer Phillips