Monday, August 31, 2009

These Socks [finally: some free verse!]

- I -

Those pink socks:
When I gave them to you,
You said you hated them:
You rolled your eyes in gay fashion
You tossed your hair like a fag
In your funny accent you replied:
"I'm not wearing these socks,
They look so gayyyy!"

And yet, these socks you wore
On that day:
You looked like a fag around the city
With shorts faded like the sea,
A shirt hued with the gray of monsoon skies
Sneakers the color of shit, and...

... Those two tiny socks
Growing over your calves
Growing over your pale skin
Hiding the almost invisible hair on your legs.

Those pink socks that I loved so much,
But that you hated.

- II -

These black socks:
When he gave them to you
(Or did he forget them at your place?
Did you keep them with a design in mind?)
You decided to keep them, worship them
Like a fetish,
Like a gift from the God that he was
So you could inhale, inhale, inhale...

The smell of lavender
And shoe polish on them
So you could take in the perfection
His perfection
In crumbs inside your lungs: "Solemnity of blackness:
The perfect socks, The perfect man, The perfect smell."

Those black socks:
Did you ever wear them?
Did you just revere them?
Or did you just keep them till for the right moment?

Those black socks that you worshiped,
But that he didn't care about.

- III -

I always wondered
Why you kept his socks?

Lying there in a drawer
For months
Amongst old pictures, books,
Other fetishes.

And then,
You returned them to him
(You could have burnt them
You could have thrown them away,
But no, months later?)
Did you keep them...

... So you could return them
Using the black, the lavender, the shoe polish
As a token
To finally go back to him
To build a bridge long destroyed?
Then, when he looked at you
He saw these socks he didn’t care about
And you… Whom he didn’t care about too.

- IV -

I always wondered,
Why you never kept them pink socks?

And on that day,
You returned them to me
(you could have burnt them
you could have thrown them away?)

But no,
You returned them to me.
Was it an excuse
To thank me
For something you didn’t need?
Or did you keep them…

… So you could return them
And tell me in a quirky accent:
“They look so gayyyy!”
As you returned them socks to me,
I saw in pink on a pale skin
The reason why I threw you away,
Like an old pair of black socks,
To be thrown away.

1 comment:

From shore to shore, without anchor said...

ooooooooooooh! it stings!

this is one of my favorites!