A poetic interpretation of the song, “Je Suis Malade” as performed by Laura Fabian
Wakening, a wisp of spatial hollows,
Walls drawn like drum skins tight.
You were a heartbeat away, once.
How can silence burn so white?
There, by the door, your shoes remain,
White floor tiles the dull insistence for their return.
Your coat, a ghost, a vapor, a stain,
Dwindles, revealing a well-worn turn.
I lay the table in ritual surrender,
An equation split, unsolved.
The mass bereft,
The charge effaced,
Twin plates, twin voids, the taste of want.
Coffee, scalding, tastes like silt.
Heat, entropic, found another.
You will come back.
You must come back.
Will you come back?
The bond shared, a barb buried deep,
Not just vows but matter woven,
More covalent than commitment,
Ripped apart, a fusion severed,
Fission bright with absence.
The ring’s absence is weightless,
But I feel it drag me under.
I trace the groove where you were,
Where you should be,
Where you never were.
Did I imagine you?
Or did you imagine me?
The chair opposite is still,
But I swear it shifts,
A phantom movement,
A waiting pause,
A question
No answer.
Sans toi, I am silence in a world of music.
A ship with sails but no wind.
A letter unsent, its ink still wet
So I weep as I sing
Voice like viola strings
Or is it woodwind tambre?
Waiting,
Waiting.
Waiting.
Then it comes, her name,
Spoken by mouths that pity me.
And I laugh, sharp and brittle,
Like glass snapping beneath a heel.
No. No.
You would not. You could not.
I was your flesh, your vow,
Your set-apart oath beneath God’s sky.
Yet there she stands, her lips red,
Your hands on her waist like a claim.
Like I was never. Like I was nothing.
Like love is a thing that can be traded.
The world, moving too fast.
Voices tangle, faces blur,
My voice stutters inside my lungs,
And I do not know this air, this ground,
This body that still wears this ring.
Je suis malade.
Bone-deep the cancer grows,
A Key-more teeth with no lock,
If you are leaving,
Then take my tumors with you.
Take the fallow earth we tilled.
The eau de parfum that lingers
Decaying, wispy putrescine
I drink the dark, let it settle.
The whiskey burns, but not enough.
A fifth to affirm
A fifth to serve
A fifth to give
A fifth of time
A fifth of touch
A hole to bury my heart
Another.
Another.
Nothing changes.
I could cut my hair, my skin, my soul
Slice the pieces that bore your touch,
hemorrhage you out, watch you drain.
Would you feel it? Would you know?
No. No. No.
No, no, no, no, no
You would not.
You could not.
But You did…
You did….
You did.
And one morning, the illumination will return,
Gentle at first, slipping through the blinds.
The sheets will smell of nothing at all.
The mirror will show a face I know.
And I will walk, not run, not flee,
But place one foot, then another,
Upon a road that does not end with you.
Suis-je libre?
No matter. I can walk.
Not run. Not flee. Not break, not beg, not fold beneath the freight you left.
One foot. Then another. Then another. Then another.
And this road
This road does not end with you.
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