Unworthy

He said he wants to take me dancing one day.
But I cannot. Not now. Maybe not ever.
My left leg bears evidence of a stupid mistake,
That has left me maimed. Crippled for life.
When I see his warm hazel eyes looking at me,
My own blue eyes seem dull and insipid.
When I see his broad shoulders,
And he holds me in his well-muscled arms,
I’m left wondering why and how,
Could such a beautiful man possibly,
Want a soft, dull cripple such as me?
And yet, he loves me more than anyone ever has.
Makes love to me like an uncaged beast.
I want to be the woman he deserves.
The most beautiful woman on earth.
Maybe that’s what he thinks I already am,
But I can’t help but feel unworthy.
I keep waiting for the spell to wear off.
That one day he’ll wake up and suddenly notice,
The beautiful desirable woman he used to love,
Has been replaced by me.

Martina The Flight Attendant

I saw you for a fleeting moment on the airplane. I fell instantly in love with you. I wondered if you had a boyfriend. You must have. A beautiful woman always has somebody for company. I briefly imagined us together. Oh, how I would love you. Do all those things you see in romantic movies: Buy you flowers for no other reason than I love you; take you for long walks along Lake Geneva; have a picnic in the park.

I think about you, and I don’t know why. It’s not rational. But love is not rational. I wonder what you are doing at this moment, and where you are. Are you happy, or sad? What are you thinking? Did you notice me? Are you thinking about me, like I am about you? Probably not. Nobody ever notices me, especially beautiful women. You are what they call “out of my league.”

You were my flight attendant to Chicago, and my unrequited love. But if I had the money I would buy another business class ticket to Zurich just so that I could watch you work on your return journey.

Martina, I never even introduced myself, and I just got your name off your name tag. You see, I am shy, and unwise in the ways of love. But I want to thank you. I want to thank you for that brief happiness you brought into my life, by just existing.

She Can’t See She

Like west coast weather,
Moods change and swing,
Rearranging things,
So the whole landscape
Is cast into a different light,
Not wrong or right,
But hard to follow,
To be prepared,
Never knowing
If moments shared,
Will somehow implode,
At the same time drawn
To beauty showed,
Beyond compare,
Beauty anchored deep,
In heart and soul,
But when black dogs howl,
She doesn’t always know it’s there.

Thoughts from a café at T-Centralen in Stockholm (A reality check exercise)

Take yourself out some place. A café perhaps, on a busy downtown street, or ideally to the train station or the bus station.
Now, get yourself a magazine. Screw the articles. Get one with lots of pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. This is not an intellectual exercise.

It’s a reality check that crosses all lines; culture, colour, class, IQ, language, gender, orientation, age. We’re all in this particular boat together baby.

Now, get settled in with those pics in your GQ, Vogue, Elle, Cosmo, or one of thousands of others in the same genre. Soak them in. Admire the pretty people.

Fantasize about their fabulous lives. Wish and dream about being like them, or even just knowing them, and being close to their world. Feel just a little bit smaller.

Now put the magazine down. Leave it open to a picture if you like, it doesn’t matter. It might even help. Shift your attention away from it though, and instead watch the dizzying array of people parading before you. Yeah. You know where I’m going with this don’t you?

Of all the hundreds, perhaps thousands of people walking past you, how many look like the models in the magazine? I’ll tell you. None. Not one. Not a single goddamned one of them. Not even the ones who are desperately trying to look like them. Hell, if one of the actual models from the magazine happened to walk by, even they wouldn’t look like their media image portrays them.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don’t look away just yet! You’re only half way through the exercise. Keep watching the parade. Watch until you find yourself revelling in the variety, until you realise where true beauty lies, until you realise it’s all subjective and the whole playing field constantly shifts and is only made up of our individual judgements based on our own needs and insecurities. Until you realise that what you see passing before you is an intricate and dazzling display of human beauty in all its forms and that in actual fact it is the media image in its inaccurate simplicity that generally fails to capture that depth.

Repeat the exercise as often as possible, until you really actually get the truth of it. Afterwards, continue to buy those magazines if you want, but for goodness sakes, keep them in perspective.