M

I tried really hard not to think about M today. So I decided to go for a walk only to discover that walks do not clear my head. Instead, I had a series of heartbreaking monologues and, tangled in the forest of my thoughts, I got lost in an unfamiliar part of the East End. I asked a group of boys for directions but promptly forgot what they’d told me and got even more lost. I had no idea where I ended up but luckily it had a cab office and I got a ride back to Mile End. I wasn’t in the mood to go home so I went to the cinema and watched Ice Age 3 instead, which provided some relief. Until the long walk home…

I don’t think he knows how close to my heart he exists. Is it possible to be ‘in love’ with someone when it’s unequally reciprocated? Surely love is a symbiotic process, a dynamic state that evolves and strengthens and joins together. But does it not also require a mutual recognition and understanding that there really is something out there or in here that matters to both? Is it my need to be accepted and understood and valued? Is it that desire for intensity beyond ‘intelligent survival’? Or is it simply the release from having to explain myself and every little thing that makes me so weird? And why does something so utterly simple have to be so complicated and painful?

And, against my will, I have Hafiz in my head:

Your love

should never be offered

to the mouth

of a stranger;

only to someone

who has the valour and daring

to cut off pieces of his soul

and weave them into a blanket

to protect you.