The journal of a king

 

The last time I cried was a day seen from the eyes of a small, petty boy in the dress of a royalty and the stance of a future king; until that same boy fall to his knees by the treacherous movement of the king’s wrist and the deafening sound of skin on skin for the reason he was crying over some matter long lost and forgotten. And kings never cry.

 

The echo of hurt left after that day was never forgotten.

 

It was the day I became an adult boy.

 

My sixth winter saw the beginning of my training in the art of moving an elegant sword over a living skin. My seventh winter saw the beginning of my training in the art of war tactics, liesmith and charismatic demeanor. Everything a king is born without, and all a king will ever needs to learn.

 

Being two and ten of years made me see my bed warmers out of my chambers from my position in the bed. They all know the way out.

 

Summer after, my father presented me to the joy of stable, innocent boys. A king needs to know his subjects through and through. It was only much later when I learnt one of my past lovers, one of the queen consort’s lovely maid, had fallen with child after one of our adventures and thus the king made sure to take care of the problem and any coming ones. The maid was never found nor was she looked after; what a shame, she had a lovely face.

 

The war came without warning and the men fought without complain. A slave will never voice an objection as long as they are well feed. The war ended and my engagement to a stranger was announced.

 

The joy of life.

 

I was fortunate to have siblings. If it wasn’t for the sash of the royal family sewed to their dresses I would have never guessed their identity; after all, who follow their mother’s pregnancies? But I was truly fortunate for having them, they made excellent games after a most weary day. But they aren’t the only games I haunted with my brothers in arm. We loved to eat from the fresh meat of the games from the forest.

 

Like any royal event, the halls were suffocating with nobles and rich merchants. From the dresses the young ladies wore you would have gotten the impression the season is open and the young maidens are making their debut in the court to look for a husband. This event was much more important than a barely dame’s new debut, it was my day of marriage.

 

The speeches around made me frustrated and my old man’s deteriorating health was a subject of numerous conversations. Many a time found my tongue almost slipping with treacherous words such as “why not bury him alive and get with life, the whelp is stubborn and will not die soon.” They could have at the least humored me with prizes at how the future queen and my consort is a pretty dame. She is a foreign and this is her debut at our court. I and my people have never seen her before and the novelty of it should wear not this soon.

 

Looking around the many faces my eyes landed on the angelic face and the smile of her. She was so beautiful, the sky opened to shine on her. The knights knitted poetic for her ears and I made to my knee in respect to this jewel. My blood sang to hers as it sang in the battlefield for my enemies and for an instant I thought I will go berserk. As courtesy incline, she will not talk to me unless I throw the first word.

 

To my left, I looked at my consort, bid her a good evening with a promise to break the night fast with her and let my war boots direct me to her. “Walk with me.” was all I needed to say. All a king need to say and for a moment I let the little voice tell me I am not a king yet but soon I shall be.

 

Like the seasons, wars came and went. Bloodlines were destroyed and houses were built. Men became angry and men became silent. Life stretched to those alive and recoiled from those to die. And here I am, an all king, an all father, in my personal chambers contemplating the beauty of my city. She doesn’t shine and she doesn’t warm. My city has a beauty of the night, of the moon and of the stars. She is cold and unwelcoming but with a constant presence and she is mine. She has the stunning beauty of a clear night’s sky oblivious to those who do not seek it and overwhelming those who do.

 

My city is part of me as I am part of her history.

 

I turn my gaze to my children and ponder, while giving up on my last breaths, who will be the liesmith, who will be the lamp, who will be the treacherous and who will claim my legacy through blood.

 

Surely, my children will be all of those skills as those are the skills of a good king, and I only sired good kings. They already took the first step of kinghood with poisoning their king and father and I smile bloodily for I know their glory had ended before it began and the crown will remember only his last king. Me.

 

The end.

 

When Slavers are civilized

The rain knocks softly at the closed window seeking welcome. He looks at the unwanted visitor with no apparent interest. His wide open eyes unseeing and his posture rigid, in the little suffocating living room, in front of the window and close to the alive, if cold, fireplace.

He couldn’t tear his eyes from the grumpy sky covering the backyard of his parents house. He all but wish to look at the people present around him. Some are friends, others are family and there’s also his old father standing with a back bent from the harshness of life while his mother, he’s certain, is upstairs cleaning anything and everything her little, skinny hands, pale from the absence of sun’s kisses for weeks, can reach.

There are voices all around him, sometimes he feel a tap or two on his shoulder, other times someone will stand beside him offering a drink if not companionship but he block it all. Still facing ahead, a shadow demand his attention. He was tall and dark with a dazzling smile if a little sad and for a thought he asks what did he do to make his brother sad, is it another prank of his? He fully turn to the shadow only to see his cousin from his father’s side, and he remember how the two, his brother and his cousin, look physically alike.

The cousin’s smile grow more honest but fell instantly when the silent man return again to the window seeing but unseeing. Maybe, he thinks, I need another big mug of coffee. If only he can see his bloodshot eyes right now and feel some sympathy toward his begging body for some mercy. The physical need is suppressed as you suppress your need for drugs and the body near him is ignored as if the wall and he made one.

Is the sky Sad or angry, he muses for long minutes then follow the thread of his thoughts to his last case because, if you didn’t know, he is a detective, a person who never rest until all the bad people are behind the bars. Oh, that’s probably why at almost forty and from the day he got the job he never got a good night worth of sleep.

His phone beep and he turn searching with his eyes his father and with one look the two say goodbye. The call is about business but he don’t drive in the direction of his office. With one hand on the steering wheel, he pat the crumbled paper in his shirt’s pocket. To be truthful, he wrote it three years ago but was never able to act on it, his resignation letter. It hurt him too much to quite a love he held from the moment a police officer saved his life.

If he tell you the story it wouldn’t look as dramatic as he remembers but nonetheless it’s a life changing memory of a nine year old child and a his three years old brother following a cat in the big park while the mother was none the wiser and getting lost for hours, well, just an hour but he likes to exaggerate. A trait he do not share with his brother for this later will always roll his eyes and move his lips in the up and downs of the word stupid but will not dare voice it fearing a black eye or a bruised arm, depending on the mood, from the bigger of the two.

The little brother was always the more peaceful. The one choosing the less violent roads, the one who became, years later, an elementary teacher.

At a stop sign, he casts his sight to the sun visor looking at the smiling faces of his family in his brother’s wedding five years ago. He almost smile until he remember the paper in his pocket and his look become grim. Maybe today will be the day.

He doesn’t hope.

At his destination, he stops some police officer from talking to him and go ahead opening the door to a white room with three dead bodies no one had the decency to yet cover. The little girl in the middle look three with too much blood – must be everything her sick looking body had – between her thighs. He didn’t know anything about her but from her traits she must be the daughter of the two, if not one, adult bodies. The woman had many bruises, old and new, and a slit throat. From what he know, she was 29 years old but looked ten years more older. While the man, her husband, a man known in the past to be handsome and easygoing if a little candid even when he was reaching mid thirty, had cuffs marks in his hands and legs. He looked like he fought for his life and the life of his family, fought for three years until there was nothing to fight for. Fought until they took his manhood and left him to die from blood lost.

There was no need to explain the hows when the past story of this little family is like an open book.

“Do you want to know if the girl is theirs?“ Someone ask behind him and he shakes his head, she was theirs.

“Do you want us to call their parents, sir?“ The same voice again demand and he don’t have it in him to look behind. He keep his gaze steady when he reply already taking the paper from his pocket and a pen to sign it.

“I want to tell my parents and my in-law myself.”

The end

PS: 1.8 from 1000 persons are kidnapped each year in the world. Just because we civilized the word “slavery” to “human trafficking” doesn’t make it any less horrific and real.

 

A love’s victim

I implored for a favor,
I demanded comfort if not happiness.
I requested mercy not justice nor equality because there’s no justice in justice not it is in equality.
In my hopes, wishes and silly dreams I lost part of my dignity and gave up a part of innocence to stupidity.

******

She looks at the pure whiteness around and stop her gaze at the proudly standing trees with a burden as heavy as hers. When the trees get tired, in one shudder, they put down the burdening snow to gloriously take more and more. She couldn’t take more nor could she shudder in the hands of the chilly air and give up what weights her steeps.

Her body is numb from the cold, her sentiments are dead from the heat. The heat coming from silent anger, from untold insults and worst, from a betrayed love.

Yes, she loves him. Loved him all her life and will always love him. Old emotions never die, we just get new ones. Even if desperation is what her heart whispers night and day for a long time now, her body will never let her forget. Forget the skin on skin, the tangled smells, the forbidden tastes and the broken pleas.
And there is no dignity when it comes to love.

If you ask her about love she will tell you, he is a little cat. If you act as a mouse you’ll be eaten, if you act as a dog you’ll be feared. That’s love for you, that’s love for her.

If you ask her about how it feels, she’ll smile. You can’t feel love, silly. You better never try to know the feeling or the consequences will be grave. Love is like the sea, treacherous even when calm but beautiful enough to make you forget his evil.

Her love was treacherous.

But love is perfectness, you’ll argue.

Oh yes, love is perfect not meant for flawed being, she’ll whisper.

It’s confusing, her words, her fake smiles, her broken steeps.

You do not understand, no one understand, not I whose writing her tall. I don’t understand.

She is not me and I’m not her. Still, she’s telling me her story, trying to help me see but I can’t.

How can I understand how you can build a whole life for someone other than your own self.
How can I understand how you can be blind to everyone but one person.
How can I understand how you can give more than you have and have nothing in return.
How can I understand?

Then, she calls me selfish. She calls me snob, narcissistic, uncaring and many other names.

In her hypocrisy and self-loathing she tries to accuse me to be the anomaly while she consider herself a victim.

How can you be a victim to your own stupidity? How can you sacrifice what you don’t have and then shield tears naming yourself candid, naive? How can you… how can you say you’re fine when you’re broken and feel hurt when people do not help?

why do you blame everyone, blame him, when you have but your stupidity to blame?

Please, do not tell me what you can do, what you know, how much you studied because stupidity is not the opposite of literacy, stupidity is the opposite of rationalization.
A heart separated from it mind is blind. A mind without a heart is dead.

You’re no love victim if you can’t learn to love yourself first. He, who don’t have anything, can give nothing.

You’re no one’s victim.

A letter to a mother

Dear Mother,

Do you still remember the time you nursed me as a fetus or the counted days you nursed me as baby? looking at me, did you feel the same happiness I’m feeling hugging my own offspring? Was I a troublesome child? My daughters are angels.

Mother, look at them, look at what I did, what I created. They are silent but not like I had been growing up. Oh no, they’re silent now because they spent the whole day playing, screaming and laughing. They got tired from being happy and I’m tired from working hard to see their smiles.

Dear mother, did you ever work for my smiles? With all due respect, I do not remember.

Dear mother, do I look pretty now? My daughters tell me all the time how pretty I’m. The prettiest and petite mommy between our neighbors mothers. It makes me remember a time when you found me using your makeup and slapped me saying how ugly I looked. Was I fourteen at the time? Maybe a year younger. I need to apologize dear mother because at that age I didn’t recognize how you meant me well, that you meant to say makeup makes pretty girls look ugly. Now, I do. I never wore anything on my face after that day.
I read somewhere children are innocent beings. I can’t call myself ever being innocent as I don’t recall ever being a child but I know my daughters are. They are angels and they never lie to their mommy. And if they say I’m pretty so be it.

I hope by now you remarked the word “read” I used. I want you to be proud of me because I can read now, I can read difficult books and my daughters say I have a beautiful hand writing. It’s all thanks to my father dearest. I remember his harsh punishments with that brown old belt and the nicknames he would give me for being a stupid child. It made me stop being stupid.

I believe all you ever did for me was for only my own good and that’s way I’m writing to you today to thank you.
I do not want you to think I’m still stupid, mother dearest, but there’s a question I was never able to give it an answer. It’s about my first daughter. Please, don’t get angry, mother dearest, I know you dislike her for I shamed you in having her while I was but fifteen. I also understand now why you throw me out of your house, you wanted me to become independent, to become mature because you can’t take care of a child if you can’t take care of yourself. Isn’t mother? See, I’m no more stupid.

Still, I couldn’t find an answer to my dilemma and when I would ask people their eyes will either tear up and leave me or they’ll look angry. I do not want you angry with me, mother. I swear, and it’s okay if you don’t know the answer too. Yes, it would be fine because nothing will change. I simply want to know if my first daughter should call me mommy or big sister and what about her other sisters? Should they call her big sister or auntie?

Auntie will sound weird, she’s just 7 years old.

It’s okay if you don’t know the answer too, mother dearest, because knowing it will change nought. I’m just thinking too much and I know father hated when I say I think, he says nothing good comes from it. He’s right.

I want you to be happy for me mother dearest because I found a man. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe but the beautiful ring on my left hand is proof. I can show it to you if you want. I remember you saying many times the day someone will lust after my skinny body will be the day the sky and earth will meet. I don’t understand the use of this saying as the sky can never fell on earth. I read our planet exist in a huge universe and the sky we see with the naked eye is part of it. Thinking about this expression I believe it means it would be difficult to find the right man. I know you didn’t want me to be with just any man, you wanted it to be the right one and I found him or more precisely, he found me.
Now, I don’t need any other man. I’m perfectly fine the way I’m right now.

Do not think he’s perfect, mother. Lately, he have been smelling really bad. I tried to wash him but he’s a really big man and moving him around is really difficult but don’t worry I can handle him. I’m a strong woman now.

Dear mother, don’t believe just because my husband smells bad that he is not a handsome man. In the contrary, even while he’s sleeping, he looks so good.
He didn’t always smell this bad. He smelled good before until I made him sleep for so long without a proper bath what caused his body odor to change but it’s okay, I’ll always sleep beside him no matter what.

I hope he wakes up soon because it’s lonely to talk to him while he can’t answer me and if he want to check up on the girls again at night, I’ll make him sleep a second time. I still remember when my father dearest will check me at night and it would really hurt, mommy. I know it’s inevitable but my little angels are still so young, maybe when they grow up a little, okay mother? By then, I hope my dear husband wake up without being angry with me.

Dear mother, do you think my husband will understand if I explained?

Yes, surely he will. He loves me and our girls to death.

The smell of my husband disturbs my daughters so we take our naps in the spare room, we have a really big house in a nice neighborhood, but they will wake up and want to be feed soon so I better cook for them something before then. I can cook many things now, it was good you made me learn how to do it at a young age with the punishment of not eating a whole day if I failed.

Writing you this letter made me think, mother. Should I use your method of education? Do you think I’m spoiling my daughters?

I’ll love to hear from you soon, mother, also tell me when my father woke up. Did it took him months or just days. By the way, if he’s asleep still and you don’t know where his whereabouts then look in the basement. I know you don’t like that place but you’ll have to go there and open the door to the hidden space under the wooden floor for him. You know that door only open from the outside.

Your favorite and only daughter.

How to win people around you

Lincoln once said: “Everybody likes a compliment.“

Sigmund Freud believes we have two motives in life: the sex urge and the desire to be great. While Dewey expressed our deepest urge as the desire to be important. Remember those great people and their words because we will return to them afterward.

Robert Cialdini highlights the fact that we have our pre-programmed taps, a unique reaction, that can be triggered in the right situation. It can be played in our advantage as it can become our weakness. To explain this idea more, we have the example of an experiment made by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer. A well known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. This simple fact is demonstrated by Langer when she asked a small favor of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine. The first time she said: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush? The effectiveness of this request-plus-reason was nearly total. Ninety-four percent of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line. The second time she said: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine. Only sixty percent of those asked accepted her request. The third time she said: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies? This time she didn’t give a real excuse because why would you want a copying machine if not to make copies, the same for all those waiting but you know what, she got the same result as the first time. The trigger here is the word because. People want to hear a reason. Sometimes we do some things for really silly excuses but we will hold on to those excuses as much as it takes because they are our reasons, without them we will have nothing to back us.

How many times did you ask why do you learn maths or history or whatever the subject you hate the most in school when you’re not going to use it in life? You already know you want to be an artist or a movie maker or a teacher in some religion and that subject have nothing to do with what you want to be but still you take it.  My little brother asks me this question all the time and replying “to be cultured” never did a good job in convincing me so how can I convince him in return? In the end, I don’t need to. Most people are scared of failing so they do everything to success. That’s our reason to learn in school. Of course, the reason may differ but the idea don’t. We don’t move without a reason.

If you don’t have a reason (an excuse) to wake up each morning, you’ll stay in your bed.

You still remember those great men who said people want to be important? We are already pre- programmed to smile when we get appreciated. You want to win someone? Praise them, acknowledge their great work and never, ever criticize.

Criticism don’t make your child eat their vegetables, your employee improve, or the people around you to like you. Now, you may threaten your children and employees but making people do what you want in their volition have greater results in the long run.

There is always a better way to say this dress makes you look fat.

I know we were criticized before in our life in a way or in another by our parents, our teachers, our friends and many times; than we like to acknowledge, from strangers. We, consciously or unconsciously, want to get revenge by doing the same to others whenever we have the opportunity even when this “other” is someone we love and then we will defend our actions with the saying “only those who loves you critic you” a stupid saying if you ask me that I heard many times in my really short life.

Not long ago, I needed a service from a man who works in the government. You should know that those men are so full of themselves and I have a feeling if the service I asked of him wasn’t my right he would had rejected it without blinking an eye. So like always, I smiled charmingly at all the workers with a good morning, thank you sir and all those protocols that make everyone blink twice at me in surprise before smiling. Yes, I’m exaggerating but really, those people are desperate for attention.

When I visited the man in question in his office, I confused his boss, maybe also his friend or hero, with some simple worker. Can you imaging what happened? He attacked me with all sort of insults. I’m uneducated, I’m not cultured, I’m a shame on my country and so on. He may be right about me but does it give him the right to say those words? Do you even know what was his excuse? He wanted to make me understand the difference between the great boss, who “I’m lucky” he didn’t attest to my so wrong doing– because it seems not knowing the boss’s name is as bad as killing a stray dog for no good reason than my selfishness– with the other simple and gentle worker who smiled at me the moment he saw me and serviced me even when he was busy but who is beneath those two great men.

Now, to get this straight, I’m a college student and preparing my bachelor degree in economics and management, I talk three languages, thinking about learning a fourth, I love to read about different cultures and traditions. O! And I’m preparing my certificate in communication-French and already finished my year in computer programming just waiting for them to call me for the final exam. Also I’m preparing my second high school diploma in literature when I already got the first one in economic and management-French and I just began studying English because all this years I self taught myself and I know I still miss many grammatical points. I believe he is not as knowledgeable as I am just from the way he talked to (insulted) me but did I say it to his face? I’m too respectful to do so especially that he’s older but did it hurt my feelings? Of course and until now I still don’t remember who is the boss so his goal to “teach” me this great thing as the boss’s name failed.

I understand the man feels some complexity. I could always use my connections to show him how uneducated I really am –in a sarcastic way of talking– or reporte what he did. But the deed already happened and there’s no need to live in the past and keep thinking about it. My simple fault was his opportunity, the trigger, to do what others did to him before. 

Critics are like a snowball, it began with a little ball, the first trigger, and it continue to grow and grow swallowing everything it touch. When you’re short you get bulled by a taller guy and when you become taller you bully someone shorter who already have their eyes on someone to bully the moment they’re a little taller and so on.

You want to improve your relationships with people, stop criticizing.

Now, if you want to fish what do you put in the bait? Your favorite mark of pasta? No, silly, you give the fish what they like to eat, worms, not your favorite meal. As much as we both think Pasta are way tester than worms, it just wouldn’t work on fish. It’s the seem with people. We are more interested in ourselves than in you, whoever you are.

Praise me but don’t flatter me, be sincere. Make me feel important and you’ll win me.

A guy was asked by his wife to tell her six things he don’t like about her personality but instead of criticizing he gave her flowers and said there was nothing he’ll change. To him, she was perfect the way she was. He may be lying but it wasn’t important, the effects of his words were instantaneous. All her friends told him that what he said was the most beautiful thing they ever heard, so imagine the reaction of the wife. He became a hero and it wasn’t so hard to say those words. He found the reason his wife asked in the first place and he completed his work with a praise.

You ask about how you look in your new dress because you want to be praised. You already bought that dress so all you want is for people to praise that choice of you.

Search the reason, the trigger, play it to your advantage, make people feel important around you and you’ll get the power. 

Jail for a flower

He walks slowly but determinedly. Only his thoughts held him at bay, to not rush to his destination. “Why can’t we live like other lovers? Why can’t you show me your love? Show me how wanted I am?” She had asked many times, he remembers. His pace don’t falter. His steps steadily kiss the familiar road with a lover’s hunger.

Everything is the same even after two years of separation. The used cigarettes thrown here and there, the old, always closed shop beside the 24/7 store, the stray black and brown old dog under an old parked car are a welcome sight.

They say the dog’s name is Caesar, he remembers. They say he lived with his owner in one of the apartments buildings in blog 7. When the lonely old man died, the dog never wanted to leave. Now, living in the street like a hunting spirit only eating from kind hands.

They say the always closed shop is truly hunted, not with an old dog like Caesar but with true spirits, he remembers and chuckles almost quietly not wanting to disturb the night’s modest silence.

They say she will be the death of him.

“You aren’t good to me.” She had accused and he tried, tried to be better, tried to love more, to kiss more, to hug more but it was never enough. “Why aren’t you trying?” She had asked. “Why aren’t I never enough?” He had asked but not to her, never to her.

His old, faded black shoes meet the dirt with each of his steps without complaints. He pass the dark passage between a café and another building without stopping nor looking at what live in that dark place. You never stop there unless it’s to piss or get raped. They say the police find a body each morning in that little passage, he remembers.

They say many things.

He walks, ignoring the bad smells, the guys looking for troubles, the dim street lights. He isn’t running. Knowing his story, his happiness, you’d think he’ll be jumping just to be faster but he isn’t. He believes if what he left was still there, more or less time will not move it. “For you I did it. Keep waiting for I will return.” He had promised and now, he came to fulfill it.

“I want flowers.” She had screamed, he remembers.

He is tired and hungry. He didn’t eat all day and he had walked for more than four hours for he didn’t have any more money on him. though, He isn’t caring, for his hunger for his drug is greater than the some tears his feet are shedding or the pleading his stomach is making. No, he couldn’t afford to care when he is so close.

He walks some more and enter a door. It was so easy to enter any door here. He climbs the stairs to the second floor, and walks more counted steps. His eyes are useless, not because the only three lamps, he remembers lightning the floor, broke some months ago and no one changed them, but because he knows where he was going. He was seeing the door to the apartment in his own mind with the fading two numbers, 23. It was were he lived two years ago before they came for him. Before they separated them.

“Wait for me, always wait for me and when I’ll get out, you’ll be the first thing I’ll seek out.” He had promised.

“I want flowers.” He remembers her pretty voice screaming. He looks at the red flower in his hand. It is real, his fingers swear. It is beautiful like her, he smiles softly.

He remembers breaking in the flowers shop that night to get her the red’s, white’s, yellow’s and much more flowers but he was unsuccessful, his two years in jail can attest to it. Now, no one will come for him for this flower is bought with the money meant for the bus ride. Bought from his own money.

He sights in tiredness, puts on an honest smile and hesitates for but a second before knocking on the door.

“Who are you?” An over weighted, middle aged woman asks, behind the open door number 23, above the screams of two children in the background.

The end

Who is he?

The Brazilian, lyricist and novelist Paulo Coelho, is a man who loves internet, music, football, walking and practicing kyudo. He stars his days walking for two hours before dedicating himself to one of his arches.

But Coehlo didn’t became this man without sacrifices. His whole life can be an amazing book to read.

 He dreamed about being a writer in his early age. His parents where realistic people who saw in this passion of his a rebelling, somewhat crazy child and put him in a mental institution three times.

To make his parents proud, he enrolled in law school but you can’t expect to give your all in something you barely love and it was understandable that he will drop out of it a year later.

He knew the meaning of imprisonment, physical torture, drugs, love and peace.

he retrieved his faith at the age of 38 and described this experience in his first book “The Pilgrimage”  but it is his second book “The Alchemist“ that present him to the world. A book that was inspired greatly from his life and that changed, say saved, many lives.

Who is he?

Do you know the story of Sherlock Holmes? Who don’t know it? From elders to youngest, everyone either heard about it or enjoyed it as a book, a series or anime with a talking smart dog and elegant lady cat. But not many know it was one of the many works that was inspired by “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe.

Poe, who lived most of his life incomprehensible and died in a way wordy of his stories. The creator of the detective fiction genre. The one who lost all women in his life and cut himself from any potential friend. Edgar Allan Poe, the writer, the editor, the poet who wrote The raver. A lovely poem who communicates with what is deep in each of us. It explains with great details the conflict between the want to give up and forget and the instinct to hold on and always cherish the memory. A memory that will generously kill you slowly but with intensive pain.

The raven makes you believe there’s only one hair between sanity and insanity. Two doors you constantly knock on waiting for the one opening first. This great poem is what pushed me to read about this American writer, to know about the love of his life, the one who inspired the raven while on her death bed.

While he was twenty seven he feel for his cousin of thirteen. Their love was so pure that he never touched her until, as some say, she became sixteen. others say, she died a virgin but the truth is not important as it doesn’t change the fact that their love ended as black words on a white paper.

Edgar Allan Poe, the alcoholic, the lover, the orphan, someone who knew great love and in it, great misery. Someone who really knew what it means to be a loser, what it feels like to fell on your knees and to get up.

The real question is do you know Edgar Allan Poe?

From Anonymous

Dear Sunshine,

It is already past the time for the birds to wake up, the café besides the baker’s to open up and for you to smile. Oh Sunshine! Do you remember the sportive young time who passed by us each morning laughing at the present? A present who, of yore, lost his identity fighting what he was in the past and yearning for an unborn future.

How much we followed the time in his mockery only to be mocked in return.

Oh Sunshine! Do you remember the alluring, graceful young lady who sat each evening under the sky to observe the stars? She would smile because the stars are loosing their light with each passing night while she keeps her beauty with each child born from her core, and we would smile with her.

Now, the so called eternal beauty long ago settled into eternal senescence.

Oh Sunshine! Do you remember a time when I would wake up before you only to greet you with my open heart? A time when I knew the meaning of love and hate, of rest and tiredness. The same time when I knew what freedom feels like and what your face looks like.

Look at me, or don’t for I barely can see in this darkness, suffocating bedroom. It became my own chamber for so long I hardly remember living outside of it. Here, time is so old you’ll roughly recognize the playful child in him. The ravishing lady, long ago, became part of history. And you, my Sunshine, I can see your heat no more. I can imagine your smile no more.

Oh Sunshine! It is already past the morning to wake up, for the birds to sing and for the coffee to be made.

My Sunshine, my love, I live where the only voice is my silence and loneliness is my only company. Is this what you feel when you’ re raped of your life?

Anonymous