tsvetoslav shalev

The evanescence of things is the reason why you enjoy your life.

– Shunryu Suzuki

Complementary listen

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I am writing to you from the train enroute to work, from the obscure café that I frequent, from the bouts of restlessness come evenfall. I’m writing to you from the past, my words and their intended purpose melting away like the sunny days in England.

I’ve not been myself recently. In moments of obscure somnolence, I am obsessed with the ghost of a smile caught in suspense – a slight parting of lips stained a gentle rose pink. Their owner, a bare-shouldered perfection of Spring’s first white draped in a river of cinnamon hair; daylight reflected in a pair of walnut-shaded eyes. And hours upon hours of silence, arrhythmic and unkind. Sensitivity and acuteness in a constant tug of war, while what’s left of my fraying sanity is reduced to a mere observer. Amid the wreckage, I scavenge chunks of perplexing doubt.

Today, many years later, from my office on the seventh floor of a large administrative building, I stare at a radio tower jutting like an unruly eyebrow hair in the distance and think I finally understand. I understand why it is unbearable to speak to someone sometimes. I think. The rest is rust…