Habits: (Lost) Rites
3 AM walks on Fridays across the Marais—from that insomniac
bar on Rue de Lappe, via a Place des Vosges gurgling secrets
in her sleep, zagging down to Rue du Roi de Sicile before
zigging back to the tip of Rue des Francs-Bourgeois
((sound asleep)), with pit stops to salute gothic
gargoyles, brush Art Deco façades, and peer
at miniature parks penned in for the night—
then up Boulevard de Sébastopol, up north,
all the way north to your shared digs
in Château Rouge, holding a wasted,
bedraggled moon aloft, turn by
slow turn—first you, then I—
till he would faint & fall
from an unsafe,
matinal
sky.
Then, the smaller, more regular ones: week-end washing, the family of filthy plates and pans and casseroles somersaulting well past burnished wooden spigots to be the first to greet me when arriving at your ancient garret in Angers by the last TGV, just grazing past midnight and the lone, last tram—with that recurrent, half-annoyed, half-amused, thought: would you first run out of copper and steel and stone, space in your cavernous sink or the resolve never to soap and scrub and rinse (drying’s all right)?
bar on Rue de Lappe, via a Place des Vosges gurgling secrets
in her sleep, zagging down to Rue du Roi de Sicile before
zigging back to the tip of Rue des Francs-Bourgeois
((sound asleep)), with pit stops to salute gothic
gargoyles, brush Art Deco façades, and peer
at miniature parks penned in for the night—
then up Boulevard de Sébastopol, up north,
all the way north to your shared digs
in Château Rouge, holding a wasted,
bedraggled moon aloft, turn by
slow turn—first you, then I—
till he would faint & fall
from an unsafe,
matinal
sky.
Fortnightly
sessions—when down
to the last clean fitted sheet—
at the prematurely aged laundrette
rasping out wrong or no change on the top
floor (was it? Or does memory begin to fray?) of
Résidence André Allix, high above the funicular station
at Saint-Juste, Vieux Lyon; some years later, the same ritual
with the swankier, snootier machines in Château-Landon, Paris
claiming more coins; the tortuous rides you would take to reach—
each time—before I’d begin to fold the cobalt nakshi kantha
quilt (you had brought back from a fair trade crafts village
near the northern suburbs of Dhaka) that you knew
I should trip over—each time—if left alone (that
quilt still alive, still untorn: strangers tend
to help, most, keen to touch, to stroke
the wealth of colors, to ask, Where
is it/are you from? One came
home the other day).
sessions—when down
to the last clean fitted sheet—
at the prematurely aged laundrette
rasping out wrong or no change on the top
floor (was it? Or does memory begin to fray?) of
Résidence André Allix, high above the funicular station
at Saint-Juste, Vieux Lyon; some years later, the same ritual
with the swankier, snootier machines in Château-Landon, Paris
claiming more coins; the tortuous rides you would take to reach—
each time—before I’d begin to fold the cobalt nakshi kantha
quilt (you had brought back from a fair trade crafts village
near the northern suburbs of Dhaka) that you knew
I should trip over—each time—if left alone (that
quilt still alive, still untorn: strangers tend
to help, most, keen to touch, to stroke
the wealth of colors, to ask, Where
is it/are you from? One came
home the other day).
Vernal
morning-walk
battles simmering
from the night before,
wildfiring, pyring by the axis
of Parc Josaphat in Schaerbeek;
our voices scorching the sleep-filled
wings of the neighboring swans, and
words—both barbed and burning—whirl-
pooling the ponds beneath their feet, then all
of it—the earth, the air, the green, that high blaze
of words and decibels, yes, everything—unspooling
in a snarl of arms and thighs, hips and groins, extra-large
elbows, tongues and—it once even felt—uncaged ribs with
double, smelted hearts, purple-hot beneath and hammering their
own daft, arrhythmic anthem, overheard only by an inquiring fox
morning-walk
battles simmering
from the night before,
wildfiring, pyring by the axis
of Parc Josaphat in Schaerbeek;
our voices scorching the sleep-filled
wings of the neighboring swans, and
words—both barbed and burning—whirl-
pooling the ponds beneath their feet, then all
of it—the earth, the air, the green, that high blaze
of words and decibels, yes, everything—unspooling
in a snarl of arms and thighs, hips and groins, extra-large
elbows, tongues and—it once even felt—uncaged ribs with
double, smelted hearts, purple-hot beneath and hammering their
own daft, arrhythmic anthem, overheard only by an inquiring fox
Then, the smaller, more regular ones: week-end washing, the family of filthy plates and pans and casseroles somersaulting well past burnished wooden spigots to be the first to greet me when arriving at your ancient garret in Angers by the last TGV, just grazing past midnight and the lone, last tram—with that recurrent, half-annoyed, half-amused, thought: would you first run out of copper and steel and stone, space in your cavernous sink or the resolve never to soap and scrub and rinse (drying’s all right)?
Happier, low-maintenance rites as well: molten, dark hot chocolate brunches to celebrate impending surgery, yes, “celebrate” the verb we’d adopted as shaggy, wet-nosed mongrel, just right for consolation. The nights in hospital, where I knew—each time—you woke to place quiet fingers and parse the storm warnings within my breath. Then, the weeks of binge-relishing Wong Kar-wai films—from Ashes of Time to 2046 (we as “We” would not live to see My Blueberry Nights and Norah Jones)—for sustenance through rebirth and recovery, till I rose, irrevocably in love with Patrice Chéreau after Son frère, and, it is true, seldom returned.
All these and a few, more diffident, others went
missing in that one, endless, afternoon of our
remaindering, slipped away—unnoticed—
amidst the naming, the labeling, the
allotting, the packing. They could
have fled through the fissures
in the kitchen wall, or rolled
down cracks in the floor-
boards—and some, I
reckon, even threw
themselves out
of windows
we’d left
open.
missing in that one, endless, afternoon of our
remaindering, slipped away—unnoticed—
amidst the naming, the labeling, the
allotting, the packing. They could
have fled through the fissures
in the kitchen wall, or rolled
down cracks in the floor-
boards—and some, I
reckon, even threw
themselves out
of windows
we’d left
open.
