Rain, leaves, and romantic activity all had a very authentic feel to them. No pleasure was felt by me. I had the impression that I had turned twenty-two all over again. I was acutely aware of the approaching winter because I was surrounded by xenophobic South Africans and residents of Johannesburg. The kiss followed after that. Well, after writing, I always felt as though something inside of me died, and I became cold. However, something was still missing from that place. How was I supposed to put that into words when I woke up? The astral plane is unaffected by anything. If you think that desire is a simple thing, you lose everything. No, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Complex enough to be researched by scientists in North America. Lately, my dreams have made me depressed. The disease was reoccurring. A homosexual man who had lovely eyes and sensitive hands walked by me on the street; there were signs. I yearned to possess the self-assurance I perceived in his swagger on the page. If I could accomplish that, I reasoned, everything would make sense, especially the dreams I had. I wanted to know why love seemed to me to be similar to a lighthouse. I kept swimming away from it, backing away, and sinking. I’m left wondering why I was never anchored.

I couldn’t place the situation or place, but it was frightening. It did feel as though I had been transported to another dimension from where I was. You think vivid dreams might be able to accomplish that? I had a long-ago encounter with a man who reminded me of this man in my dream. I had fallen in love with a lecturer. He was the man I was madly in love with for almost two years, naive and sexually inexperienced. He was a task and an investment. Later on, I would realize that he was my true love. But a terror accompanied dreaming. Although the dreams were not real, I was content in them. I was unaware of the hidden dangers I faced when I was awake. when I was living in the present. When I say that I was happy, I really mean that I had no fear, either real or imagined. No anxiety or trembling in the body that accompanied hallucinatory images, nor any fear of hypomanic psychosis. There was no obscurity. In my dreams, I no longer experienced pain, sadness, the rigid pull of insanity, or the mercy of fleeing from it with great caution. being on alert for suicide. No nightland existed. There were only regular people present. Common people talking and having conversations about love, making out, and falling in love.

I used to have all of these dreams. What was my subconscious trying to convey to the self-conscious actor inside of me? that I should be prejudiced? that I ought to pursue a different activity with my life besides writing? That I should abandon my rituals for writing and using cooking as therapy and go out into the world, find a husband, have those children, walk down that yellow brick road, that sunny road, and accept that happiness took too much commitment, too much energy, time, but just do it anyhow. Brilliant and excellent performance are required. Achieve it with ease and wisdom. Couldn’t raising kids the same way be simple if I could raise a chocolate chiffon cake so easily? If I could follow my sister’s neatly handwritten instructions to make lasagne or bolognaise perfectly, I’m sure I could make a great wife for someone, but that would require me to be honest. That would require me to answer questions about how my mother had “touched” me when I was a child and be interrogated. our joint bathing sessions. The door was always left open by her. Call me and ask me to wash her back while my father is sleeping. I don’t want to recall that. Every time someone touches me, I become frightened.

I don’t want to think about it, let’s not go there. Please, I beg you. But she didn’t comprehend. Highly favored, educated, and cultured. How on earth could she be expected to comprehend the physical aberration of sexual abuse when she was so highly regarded? Every day, the damaged mind and psyche of the defenseless child who was raised in an abusive environment became more and more conditioned to live in denial and sympathy. She was unable to see into my world, so that overt violation and graphic violence occurred. The world of neglect and abandonment. I believed my dad was aware. There were barriers in my childhood world because I believed he believed it. I believed that we were being shielded from naughty kids and protected. I learned from my mistakes. I preferred to be more like my mother when I grew up, but I was never as graceful and attractive as she was. Never, I had let her down. In that sense, I had let down both of my parents.

Skin on skin is similar to fabric, sleeping, and water in the wild. I want you to tell me that you love me, not just show me. I know this dearest lover, but I need it like breath, like self-pity, like broken air, like remembering my Ouma’s wizened hands from arthritis. I’m aware that our union won’t last forever. There is a part of me that is terrified of parting ways with you. Observing you leave the living world and enter the afterlife. The highest biblical proportions were present in the afterlife. Understand that I am a failure. I’m a failure as a woman because I wouldn’t be successful at taking care of your kids, dancing with you at night, or acting innocent as you enter me with my hair framing my face. You don’t know anything about me, despite the fact that I might play with you, offer you my body to sate you, leave your body glistening with sweat, and lie next to you in the dark to watch you fall asleep. keeping an eye out until the morning hours. I’m aware you’ll break up with me, lover. Your children are to blame, not you. I want to see images of them. A gallery of your angels would be nice. Put your tender love light in a picture for me. By this point, you are familiar with my terms.

If you want to chat or have fun, give me a call. I’ll hear about all of your problems. I’ll continue to love you in that way. For one night, I’ll turn you into my entire world. I have a feeling your wife is not at all like me. I ponder whether she resembles my mother in any way. Women who are even remotely similar to my mother have this constant desire to be worshiped. I still find myself terrified by women who resemble my mother in any way. You have your arm around that lovely, graceful woman in the picture, and I am nothing like her. Does she actually bring you joy? I’m happy for you if she complies. You don’t want to know anything about me, and I won’t miss you, I assure you. You don’t want to hear about my upbringing, my competitive nature, or how successful we’ve all become at failing to find lasting love. Despite everything working against us, we’ve managed to succeed in life nonetheless. My siblings and I have successfully accomplished our parents’ lofty expectations for us, despite not being as successful as I would have liked in my own life. I and my sister were not given the elixir of a sunny road. Do not awaken just yet; have a heart.

In your arms, my love, is the only place where I don’t feel foolish and where I feel safe. Here I forget about the Holocaust, genocide, and the hell of Dante. Please allow me to forget about Auschwitz and Rwanda. Bergen-Belsen and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I want to forget about that beach day. I was tracing the scar from my Caesarean section and fingering it as if all the stitches would fall out and I wouldn’t be here. I would disappear without a trace. Please explain the absence of maternal love to me. My teenage heart would chant as my name was called, “Win. Win. Win.” As I approached the stage, the principal would present me with something lovely. Intelligence was never sufficient; one needed a certificate. A generalized prettiness or an attractive personality was simply never sufficient. Do not, under any circumstances, let us go there until I have finished navigating. The childhood invisible people called was my own personal hell. I’m Alice, and I have a Cheshire cat. I am a resident of my own wonderland, and I will do everything in my power to keep it that way. The lack of maternal love is something I want to forget. The peace and quiet and that unlocked door allowing prostitution to pass.

At the nape of her neck, her hair was perpetually wet and slightly curled from the steam. I would wash her back in circles while smelling like soap on my hands. She had slumped shoulders, which I recall. She hunched her shoulders, perhaps to conceal her breasts, perhaps out of insecurity, perhaps simply because she was sick of her highly sexy manic depressive husband. She displayed her Caesarean scar after getting dressed. Tell me how the doctor removed me from her, just like Jonah did with the whale. Now that I’m an adult, her personality more closely resembles mine than mine does my father’s. Don’t touch me, please. Avoid focusing on my face. If you want to make real love to me, you’ll have to do it in the dark. Why do you want me specifically in the first place? Are you waiting for my approval? What do the mother’s tiredness and inability to read my essay mean in terms of love, dating, and being a boyfriend and girlfriend? I am not a Buddha’s offspring. I am the offspring of something less. I’ll go down on you first, then self-actualize that. I’ll beg you to make fun of me in front of you while I’m on my knees. A psychologist doesn’t come with multiple choice questions that require you to color in the blank dot next to the correct response, but I’ll try my best.

I’ll be completely honest with you: I have no desire to settle down and have a wife. It has absolutely no allure for me. I don’t find it alluring. Like how Los Angeles makes me feel. I feel positive vibrations coming through its waves. It would appear that giving up writing would be necessary for me to be a married person. I would have to smile and put on a pretty face for pictures. What if he consumes alcohol? What if he smokes? He wants to have how many children. Likes red meat, do you think? Will I have to get good at experimenting with new recipes if he likes exotic foods like couscous? Or will he prefer to eat out, try fancy restaurants, and have dinner there every night? Or is he a steak and potato man like my grandfather once was? He fathered two kids with two different women. My grandmother was tenacious. She was a formidable woman. If my husband went to bed with another woman in search of love, I would not be able to handle it. My mother has taught me everything I know about women and nothing extraordinary. How to plant the seed of manipulation inside a man’s eye. What a difference between a woman’s and a man’s personality. The femininity, sexuality, and sensuality of the second sex.

How man must be pardoned for concentrating only on his own aura, identity, psyche, and ego, as well as his mother’s vulnerability and how much more fragile she has grown as she has aged. A man now realizes his own mortality after learning that his mother has grown old and is living in the best home his salary can afford. Everyone should be inspired to cultivate something. to cultivate a plant or animal on a plot of land. Plant a tree or a forest. My mother would toil away in her garden for hours on end. During and after apartheid, South Africa had a fragrant, opulent garden. Mum had succeeded in that. She didn’t have any close female relationships. Since she was exotic to me, I don’t have any close female relationships as an adult. My responsibility was to anticipate it. rather than designating it a landmark. Why didn’t you love me, mom? I called your name that day while I was on the beach. Why didn’t you go back and wait for me to overtake you? Although you were unable to hear me, you made me hate you. I was waiting for you again and felt like a child in a different time. like the day you neglect to pick me up from my extra lesson or rehearsal.

On that particular Sunday, we were short on cash and couldn’t afford to buy our groceries.)

You were dressed in your church heels. As usual, your appearance was flawless. White stockings were what I wore. To me, it has always been a small wonder how you managed to avoid smudging your creamy pink lipstick that managed to get into the folds of your lips. You left me standing next to our trolley, which was stocked with enough food in bags to last us the remaining four weeks of the month. went home, which was 20 minutes from the mall, to get your father’s credit card because you didn’t have enough money or your salary hadn’t yet been deposited into your account. My older and more mature cousin Vincent, who was staying with us while taking a bridging course at the nearby college, turned his back on me and started to walk away. I begged him not to look away. And I wish he had stayed and waited with me. That was a thoughtful thing for him to do. However, Vincent never treated me nicely. only until he discovered the bright path of getting married and having two children of his own. Did he buy his Indian wife expensive perfume or flowers? Did his son and daughter know that he spent his nights downloading violent pornography and erotica from the internet? I suppose that’s what every man does. Find women electric.

What time did they first realize that? Like the desire I experience in my dreams rather than when I’m in their presence. I remember everything, of course. Dust and the heat of the day. I recall the cashier’s little crooked smile that Sunday morning, and I quickly turned my head away. I can still picture the young man, who was not much older than my cousin, who had loaded the groceries onto the cart. He did not look into his eyes. As girls get older, so do men, right? Right, the aura of the mystique of sexuality always surrounds beautiful children. Will girls develop into being morally upright or promiscuous? No matter how intelligent they may be at first, will they get a degree and make a difference in the world, or will they make a man happy, serve his needs, butter his toast, make his breakfast, have children, become unhappy, drink too much merlot or cabernet, and lose their looks? during their formative years. Pornography does not appeal to women’s romanticism. They desire pricey perfume and flowers. They desire a home that is roomy enough for their growing family and to accommodate all of their desires. You see, everything is very expensive.

Everything is of the highest caliber, as you can see. But I’m simple; I’m your lover of relief. I have a killer instinct that I was born with, and I’m your release. All you’ll ever need, want, and desire is my physical body. You’ll never be aware of my spiritual poverty; all you’ll ever know is how insatiable you make me feel, and I am your conquest. The night is tender, my love. We got together on a gorgeous summer afternoon. It had the air of a warm day. I wanted to remove the dark hair from your face and eyes that framed your features. Of course I fell in love with you right away, walked by your side, fell in step with you, kept up with your pace, warmed to your life, and to your sincere dignity. I was only filled with gratitude, you have to understand. I put an end to my contemplation of death. the wish-fulfillment that I occasionally carry in my most hopeless moments, along with thoughts of despair. When it comes in waves and is created by slicing through the still light, I think of you and of us. I kept a close eye on you. All I could think about was that hand on my wrist or that hand in my hand as you would pause your sentences with a hand gesture. That hand in the small of my back, on my shoulder, was all I could think about.

I only dreamed about that hand resting on my neck. Moreover, barriers from childhood were gone. As a reward for all the effortless dedication and energizing labor I had put in throughout my adult life, I became angelic, ethereal, and otherworldly, and you were my reward. That cleared away all my sins in due course, leaving me feeling pure. I felt incredibly fortunate. The unquiet otherness of revolution, self-illumination, and imagination followed turning points. You’ve started to motivate me. We were spared hours of conversation or childhood. Thank you for everything you did for me, especially for your kindness and the many hours we spent in each other’s company. Thank you for bringing out the laughter in me. I’m thrilled that I might have been able to do the same for you in some insignificant but priceless way. For your talents, I’m grateful. Thank you for imparting to me your wisdom, insights, and influence. Thanks to your inspiration and everything else that came together to create the picturesque scenes of my happiness, you were able to wipe away my invisible tears, my rain, and my moods that were like a season of bad weather. I now recognize you.

The gloom still pervades some days. That will always be the case, I am confident. It’s a fact of life, but there is also a silver lining to every cloud. Golden, golden, always golden, like my glorious notebook. The line of men continues indefinitely, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. Although I am aware that they will never live in my life indefinitely, they will continue to share with me everything they know about it for as long as they can. If I choose to act a certain way while I’m in their presence, they’ll accept me for who I am. The obstinate child, the submissive girl, the gamine adolescent, or the adult woman in her thirties who now accepts her infertility, her education, and her culture as only she can. She will call it, on her own terms, self-control, order, and the hazy lines that hide all the legalities in between. It’s not that I want to forget the choices I made in my early 20s, my depression, the career path I chose, or whether or not they were the right ones for me. It’s also not that I want to forget whether or not promiscuity is a lifestyle or a phase, or why some women are more naturally inclined to it than others. The fact is, I do.

It should go without saying that I will always. What more can I say or demonstrate as evidence of my life, my love, my desire, and my willingness to give up my will? What more can I allow myself to be? Now it all boils down to this. Yes, I was going to accept this eventually. I am aware of the necessity of our meeting. The time has come for me to move forward because I have accepted what you both had to teach me. You are no longer mine to own. Shakespeare and Keats, both of mine. I understand why we won’t cross paths again. But I’ve come to terms with it now. Why was I required to vanish in that euphoric joy and allow it to purify me? Now that I have such intense mental clarity, everything is coming back to me. I’m starting to feel more romantic again. I have put that day at the beach in the past and moved on with my life. A past that is no longer alive in my eyes. However, I will never regard either of you—indeed, all of you—as dead. Thoughts that destroy wisdom. My mother, she did not love me; you did. Like you both did, she had no desire for any aspect of me. One with a maddening disposition, the other with an introverted, traditional, gentlemanly predisposition. You are not old in my opinion.

I never thought of you as an old man (perhaps shy when you made your intentions known, what you really were after in the end, I didn’t understand, let me explain why, or have explained to the best of my ability here in this story, but it is not a story). You can, after all, read between the lines. Please note that I am writing to you. Perhaps one day you will understand this), but much older, wiser, and more developed than I was. Only a piece of fabric, your skin. That beach day, you completely destroy. everything bad from my early years. a lack of maternal love. As a child, teenager, and young adult, she didn’t want me. She met her own needs and desires through our conversation as an adult woman. You are the pivotal person in my life. You are the source of my poetry’s inspiration and its ethereal escape. You are my beacon and my Southern cross. You serve as my beacon. ‘You reduced me to a psychological framework made up of interdependent psychological components. The space where I retreat to when I want to write, be by myself, or escape the magic of the outside world. Disengage from the predetermined original and expel into the spiritual realm.

I couldn’t simply exist in the realities of this world; I had to become the otherworldly, ethereal feminine. In that otherness world, I develop into a shamanic Cinderella and once more become attached to my writing rituals. Become more attached to the invisible. In my life, a new man has entered. There will always be a new man in my life. I still can’t adopt love, summon it, or make the necessary adjustments. I hope that this time I won’t ruin what God has given me. My instruction manual and survival manual are both you. I must now have faith that another man will step in to fill your shoes, that I will fall in love once more, but this time the romance will be different, and this time I will feel safe. And this individual will be wise. This man will be a scribe. He’s going to be a creative person. This man will accomplish a great deal in his lifetime, and I will be by his side as he establishes his kingdom and successive empires (hence the necessity of our meeting). Because of this, whenever I finish writing something, I have to feel a series of deaths before I can put it away and send it into the world, much like a shaman would. For this reason, I had to want you, feel the mental pain keenly, and feel anchored by sensitivity.

Along with love, there is also humiliation, ardor, embarrassment, shame, and the blessed abundance of wisdom that all of these emotions bring. wishing for everything, if the glove fits. The totality of it all is what matters most. The following man might be a poet. He telepathically rhymed the cosmos, pointing the telescope at every star in the universe’s fabric. Will he be able to control himself? Will it awaken him to his own shimmering depression, humanity, humility, and attempt at greatness? Or will it inspire him to achieve great things? You can go on and on about your empire, the empires you want to conquer, and your desire to eventually establish a kingdom. If you need me to be your attractive woman, I’ll be quiet, lean my head against your shoulder, and sit next to you. Go down, down, down into your moments of utter desolation (not mine), humiliation (not mine), and despair, and I will finger that holy gold band as if it were mine. I can imagine anything, which is what makes me a risky woman. I won’t ever be yours for very long because of this. Can you envision all the challenges a mental illness presents? How will I endanger your world and means of subsistence?

Instead, let me learn to forget it by visualizing the angelic’s pure light shining off your face. Your face will once again be like a blank slate if I can take the shine off it, my dear. What do you say when I imagine our union in front of guests in the church where our children will be baptized, wearing white wedding lace, the happiest day of my life that belonged to me and you? Are you strong enough to stick by my side, to be my man, to take on me, that, and the illness? Cat got your tongue? Books, the literary community, publishers, and editors are the intended audiences for stories. Despair is for poets who have been tortured. With a little luck, I can act myself to death. I can make a ton of wonderful things with my female intuition, understanding, and sensitivity; I can swap recipes; I can torture spices in the kitchen; and I can wipe down counters with smiling finesse. But you won’t see that side of me for very long, sadly. I’ll be retiring to bed soon. The voices that rain down on my parade and down on me like coins in the metro (Ezra Pound’s metro) need their sleep just as much as I do. And from Alba to Orlando, the city of love, I’ll travel before setting up camp in a secluded desert in the middle of a scorching wilderness. So that’s it from me for now. Time to say adieu.

It’s time for me to transition from optimism to annoyance. Menial tasks can take me hours to complete, or I might choose not to do them at all. Breaking up with a lover is such a sweet sorrow, but I do it so, so well. As I transition from the world of the commonplace mundane and commonplace madness to the world of the very real and very exquisite madness, I make an impression. You don’t realize how much I need my books, but I really do. To be completely honest, I feel very lost without them and lack the energy to take a shower, wash my hair, or detangle it. Anything would be helpful; I need information. Take away this shroud from me. The gloom. The negativity. Give me purity, not the depravity. Why it makes complete sense to me and makes no sense to you is beyond me. I need a lot of them. They must be close by for me. They are something I want to be able to access. The words must be understood. I must find something to do. To occupy my personal space and prevent me from becoming bored, high, or low during my time in the hospital. I’m sad that I can’t have you, keep you, or consume you at any time of day or night. The highs and lows are reflected in my writing. Since you are no longer here, inspiration has also ended.

Irascibility has vanished. I used to be governed by my childhood, much like I am still governed by that day spent with my mother at the beach. She is dancing out of my reach and away from me. I’m also suffering a death that is worse than death. Doesn’t every child who is initially unsure feel the absence of maternal love? I keep playing that death cassette again and again. I also move too slowly to the music when I dance. I’ll never be able to match her gracefulness. Despite the fact that I would prefer for us to be watching television together right now. Despite the fact that you would be watching the World Cup and I would be reading (deep in a book). However, you most likely are given the circumstances. You have a wife who is the woman in your life. I hiss, “Confess. Confess.” From relapse to recovery, you won’t be required to attend, even though I would really like for you to. However, I would prefer if you were aware of that without my knowledge. Dear, do you worry about me? Well, don’t, darling; I don’t need your sympathy. In any case, there is no cure for it. This chronic condition has no cure. I do well with electricity. We are a match made in heaven. It acts like a blade, slicing right through. What else could you do but apply pressure after pressing that blade against my wrist? Blood divine.

Oh, blood divine.