The Nine-Chambered Heart

by Janice Pariat

so I watch and do not offer praise.

At first, I’m not quite sure how to respond. Do I appear pleased? Do I ignore you now, in return? I think in my confusion, I do a bit of both, but this doesn’t deter you. If anything, it seems to make you even more determined. You

And everything I answer is followed by ‘why?’

Why do I read poetry? When I turn the questions back at you, I find you pleasingly impulsive.

I’ve never been at the receiving end of something like this.

You seem puzzled, though undeterred. But the more you clamour for my attention, the less I give you any. It’s a terrible dance, and I feel sick, but I don’t know what else to do.

But you cannot control how others choose to see.’

They say folding a thousand cranes will grant you a wish. I wonder what it is you’ve wished for. I hope so much it will come true.

I’m attempting. But you make me nervous. Even if I’ve just met you, I feel I must appear more than I am, or have ever been. A better version of myself, shinier, somehow more brilliant.

I’ve always had a sense that everything beyond is so much larger, that it moves to crazy rhythms, and contains people like you.

This is what it was like, I think, for explorers, perched on the brink of an expedition. You an undiscovered continent. A land that hasn’t been charted. And in a way, for me, the world.

It’s one of those moments when you feel music will make everything all right, and the world isn’t such a shitty place after all.

With you, I am highest, and lowest.

I watch you from a distance; sip my whisky – both in unhurried pleasure. I am called to your face. That nose, that sweep of brow, something about your chin. Your hair is long, but swept deliciously away from your neck, piled on top. You are pleasingly – not conspicuously –

And if I were a poet I’d find a way to describe your body as it deserves to be.

Beneath the softness, there’s grit. It shows in your mouth, when you don’t wish to reply, in the tilt of your head. Even in how much you can drink. I am amazed that you keep up with me, glass for glass. Then even more, when I’m done.

It must be youth. They don’t know it, but the young drink to die.

Alongside raging life runs an urge to extinguish themselves. It h...

other explanation for thi...

Your mouth is soft and responsive. It takes me by surprise. With me, you’re friendly but guarded, yet your kisses are eager.

I will remember you by this, always, that you are immensely giving. Here is all of me, your mouth seems to say, I do not hide myself.

You hold so much power in the palm of your hand. To walk away from this whenever you wish to. While I watch the bubble, and

try so hard, on prayer alone, to keep it afloat.

‘It’s the hardest thing,’ I say, ‘to bring things to a close.’

‘Mon petit cheri… for you there is only joy.’

My little love Aadya

Have you ever had a lover who’s died?’

You shake your head. ‘It must be hardest to lose someone that way.’ ‘That’s what you would think, no? That this person is forever… gone. Out of your life in the most permanent way possible. But I feel… or at least I’ve come to believe that it’s harder knowing that the person you are no longer with is somewhere laughing, eating, sleeping… doing all these mundane things, and carrying on with life.

The shock of losing… of course that is harder when they die. But you know, selfishly, they will never...

The night, for me, will never be the same again. It has become a length of time within which you can lose the unimaginable.

I am in love with you by way of deepest, most profound friendship.

Does that make sense? It does to me.

From MAGIC With Love

It is hard to love under subjugation. Every little bit of tenderness is a miracle.

think it’s preferable, this constant anticipation. Being perpetually on a pleasurable edge. Perhaps it’s the only way to retain it. Love. To never have it happen. To love, otherwise, is always to lose. And isn’t it true?

That one imagined kiss is worth a thousand real ones.

I say this also to conso...

getting

back together with an ex is like reusing old underwear after a shower.

I like the sound of your voice, especially when it’s tinged with anger.

Very little has made sense to me except physics, the basic principles that govern the physical world around us. Momentum, forces, motion, energy. Everything can be explained. Eventually. Even this, what I feel for you.

(I’m enjoying this, even if you are not.)

After this, like some stupid helpless puppy, I constantly need to know where you are. As though I am oriented only by your presence, or your absence. You are my north.

Your lips are strange and familiar all at once, like a song I’ve known well and somehow forgotten.

There’s a thrill though, of us not being the same people, of our skins having

changed, of our mouths being the same.

Believe me when I say I will not forget you. I do not love you, but I will not forget you. How can I?

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita

I know there is no future with you. That we have met, and we will part. That it is only for the here and now, no matter how far our intimacy seems to extend into the future. I cannot imagine how you refuse to see that. Surely it cannot be? All I can do is ignore it. But I will say this, that it lends something to the space between us. You have filled it with hope. That is the terrible thing I see in your eyes. Hope.