By Mardin
your absence is a silent thunderstorm
that suffocates me back to life,
an all-encompassing feeling of
nothing.
a body piercing shriek
in an empty walkway of thoughts,
your death is
tears to my soul,
shreds in my heart,
beatings to my chest.
it’s everything and nothing but
an empty letter addressed to a
fleeting moment.
Mardin
21/05/2019
unrehearsed words unclenched
slowly,
onto untainted hearts
welcomed
holly, unwisely he loves her,
Nothing left but a desolate heart.
Mardin
15/05/2019
& her thoughts
Your friends are staggered in the rooms before and after you, while you stay stagnant in an empty, light, mustard yellow room. Everyday you see thousands of people, everyday you stand still knowingly posing for the hundreds of photos, yet you can’t help but feel alone, isolated in the glass box that separates you from the rest of the world. A smile is what you’re known for, and yet you wonder why, “Why does my smile bring such a grand allure? Why?” You ask yourself how is it that people cannot see the hollowness in your eyes, for you wear it like a scarlet letter for the townspeople to see.
There is a melancholic nature to you Mona Lisa, your eyes are sad. You watch the various faces come in and out, and you stand still like you always do, wondering whether they’re truly appreciating you or basking in superiority for being able to visit you. The more you look the more you know, you know this is not how you want to be remembered, this is not how you want to live, because when the camera’s disappear and the people are gone, you’re left in a darkened room in the middle of the night, alone, no companion, no friends, when you’re finally free to breathe and break free from your almost smile, you are left with an everlasting loneliness. You can hear your friends next door talking amongst themselves, laughing at the tourist who had to be escorted out because he dared touch one of the paintings, the Roman Antiquities come to life and start walking around, they stretch their stiff legs and visit the Gudea to discuss the value of religion. Delacroix’s tiger’s come to life, roaming the halls of The Louvre hungry for their next prey. Your friends used to visit you but they saw the sadness in your eyes, don’t see the grandeur of your portrait, and have since been discouraged from coming again.
Oh Mona Lisa, you’ve forgotten to use your words, you haven’t spoken in forever and you’re longing to scream is on the tip of your tongue but you’ve forgotten to. You’re saddened to never see the halls of The Louvre, visit Liberty, leading the people, peak in to visit Bathsheba at Her Bath. You often wonder, what if you were La Belle Ferronnière and she was you. Oh it must be extraordinary to exceptionally ordinary, to walk freely and breathe fresh air, to go beyond the four walls that you’re enclosed in. You lock eyes with everyone that come to see you, you wonder what it would be like if you switched out of your dress and switched into pants, place your hair up in a bun and walk away, visit the Seine, walk by the water, go in and out of the gift shops, oh how wonderful it must be to have someone to buy souvenirs too.
But your reality is that you will forever be enclosed in a glass box, bound by four walls, in an empty room filled with thousands of people. You will forever be alone as the crowds grow bigger. Mona Lisa, you are the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most industrialized, and the most critical work of art in the world, and yet no one knows how misunderstood you are.
Mardin
19/03/2019
and other selfish thoughts
On the eve of my 25th birthday I was standing in front of the Bassin Octagonal of the Tuileries Garden in the first arrondissement of Paris. It was a cold and windy afternoon, traces of the earlier drizzle was all over the green lawn chairs that sat around the fountain, and although the sun was out and there was not a single cloud in the sky, the petrichor still lingered in the air, giving a subtle hint of spring and the promise of rebirth.
I’ve never been one to make a big deal about my birthday, but it was also something that I looked forward to. Growing one year older, celebrating a day dedicated to you with family and friends, presents, surrounded by love, how can you not look forward to it? But standing in front of this, dare I say, mediocre fountain, I was overwhelmed with the memories of the last 20 or so years, with an emphasis on the last three. It wasn’t an easy couple of years and it definitely wasn’t fun. It was really hard, and quite honestly, very lonely. And that being said, I can’t deny the fact that I was surrounded by love, friendships and support my entire life, and I definitely do not take that for granted. What I mean to say is that in the past two years alone, the experiences I’ve gone through, the emotions I’ve felt and the loss I’ve endured was an experience limited to my own within the group of people I surrounded myself with. I’m sure someone in this world has dealt with the range of experiences and emotions that I have, but I haven’t met them so we can’t share our stories, learn from each other and heal together, if that is even a thing. I’m still searching for that aha moment, when I can finally understand the secret to life and living, where I turn the pages of my story and start anew, when I can finally turn my feelings off and not have a care in the world, or in other words, when I can raise my middle finger to the world and give it the metaphorical fuck you.
But then again, that’s not me, I do care. In fact, I care too much about the people in my life, so much so that I forget to focus on myself, I forget to be selfish, and so I decided be selfish. And in selfish manner, all that I can think of is, that on this birthday, just like the past two birthdays, I will not be getting the call I always get, got. Its a selfish feeling, quite frankly, I think it’s the most selfish feeling to feel but I cant deny how much it hurts missing you Nana. I can’t believe that on my 22nd birthday, that that would be the last birthday phone call I would be getting. You were always the first to call me and wish me a happy birthday and ever since those calls had stopped my world stopped. So here I am in Paris, doing the most selfish thing during the worst time in my family’s life, chasing some sort of joy, some sort of comfort to my birthday, and all I can do is cry. I’m crying in Paris. If I can’t find closure or some sort of happiness here, how can I ever find it?
The big 25, I always said I wanted to live to be a hundred, and by that standard, I’ve completed a quarter of my life, and I don’t know how I feel about that. Adulting is hard when your heart is that of a child’s, I still believe in the naiveté’s of life, that good will always prevail, that life is fair, that good things happen to good people, despite the fact that time and time again life has proven me wrong. I tell myself I want to grow out of this notion, have a heart of stone, but I’m afraid if I do, the love I have for the world and the little things such as my appreciation for the languages, my love of Monet, my tears at the end of Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix, I’m afraid all of that will go away, and then everything that I am, everything that I know myself to be will be lost. What a paradoxical world we live in?
I spent my day chasing Monet’s work, I went to four different museums to bear witness to his life’s works. They each tell a story, one unique from the other, and each story unique to the eye of the beholder. There was a sort of melancholy that spoke to me in his works, I didn’t come out of it feeling resolved, I came out of it feeling understood.
I’m not quite sure what the point of this post is, much like the path my life is on, all I know is that it’s 7am in the morning in Paris, on my birthday, and I woke up with the sudden desire to write this.
Be good to me 25.
Mardin
14/3/2019
Consequential Strangers 