Tonight, Walking Home from the Bus Stop

I am writing to write tonight, I think. I envision Argentinian soccer players, but that's not very poetic, even though one day someone will write a paean to their bodies -even though I have no idea what a paean is.

I wish I were more poetic, but how can I be when I no longer read poetry? I have been isolated from my sea of books, set apart to run adrift in a world of endless procrastination, when I would so much rather immerse myself in the pleasures of your body.

It's funny, the way I thought of you tonight, after so long. I didn't miss you, exactly - if you were here now, I would probably reject your advances. Maybe I'd even cry - did I ever let you see my tears? I don't remember - our relationship has become no more than a string of images:

The two of us sitting on a wooden bench, on a concrete block overlooking dying flowers.

The tree where you first told me that you love me.

Holding hands in an abandoned building, presenting you with a blue dente to match your t-shirt and the color of your eyes; fingering the necklace against your chest as we lie on my couch, your brown hair against the pink sheets of my bed, your glasses.

I even remember your eyes. That's odd - I don't usually remember men's eyes. I can remember other body parts, but the eyes always elude me. But your eyes pulled and tugged like a chain, and that morning, when I left your house, leaving my backpack behind like the ancient Israelites who forgot to bake bread on their way out of Egypt, it was the knowledge that I would not have to see your eyes that propelled me to lock the door behind me.

Did you call me then? I remember crying in a glass lobby, and falling asleep on the train. Or was it the next night? The days all blend together. But like Moses promising Pharaoh that he will no longer see his face, I kept my promise to myself that I would not see those blue torture-chambers that dot the space beneath your eyebrows. No wonder you thought it funny when I spoke of S&M, or the drunken readings of the Marquis De Sade that took place in my apartment.

I always preffered the works of Leopold Von Saccer Massoch - his name has an elegant ring to it, and the last line of "Venus in Furs" is devoted to gender equality. I bet they never bothered to read it - those people who haunt the BDSM clubs of Southern Tel Aviv, who drink semen and leather the way I drink coffee.

If only quitting coffee were as easy as quitting you - maybe then I would not have head-aches on the Day of Atonement - only tears.