The art of the billet-doux is not dead (and neither am I) You may well ask – with some justification, I might add – why anyone would dedicate themselves to the writing of over 600 love letters across a ten year period without sending any of them. You may also wonder for whom these unmailed…
For the beautiful strangers
Though we are yet to meet, and may never, I know, by instinct, precisely who you are. I see you, fully formed, in the blinding dazzle of sunlight. I feel you, present and textural, in the warm murmur of golden evenings. I sense your approach, rising, in the abundant promise of spring. Intoxicated, I can…
The angel and her silence
It was you that I saw. Amidst the teeming. With its voice brash and colours bright. While the dance was happening. In the vivid swirl of wine and song. If I had arrived alone, for each brushing past I was lonelier still. Filling the space with empty sound. Yet we did not speak, for there…
They are all you
Ever since I met you, I have always known. It is not that they are shadows, nor you their ghostly forebear. Neither do they replace you, or simply stand in your place. They shall not follow in your wake, nor wear thy lovely crown. The shiver of your love shall not be stilled in their…
If we might still mend it with kindness
Already, it has begun. The slow uncoupling. The incremental shifting of orbit. The quiet cellaring of doubts – earmarked as likely ammunition. Yet I wonder if we might still mend it with kindness. For not so long ago we were a kind, as though we had reached across the unbridgeable gulf between souls and seen…
Watch our award winning ‘meta’ romance!
TWO is an award winning ‘meta’ romance; where the post-modern boy/girl thing suddenly gets very real and the rules of engagement change forever. Love may well be a game – until you get hurt. Because one & one will always make two. Shot in around St Kilda in 2010, this minimalist 53 minute romance was…
Love letter # 835 How many roads have I travelled in search of belief? Schools of thought, ancient philosophers, the many isms and ideologies; these have been my citadels of faith. All have crumbled. Their gods are not merely slain but revealed to be little more than idols of fantasy. Yet I have gladly set…
Love letter # 656 What if you are happier elsewhere? What if this is not working for you? Would I hold on? Would there even be a point to that? If I saw that look in your eye – that gazing into the distance of another – would I love you enough not to close…
For my vanished Valentines
You. All of you. Seeping through cracks in time. Splinters in splintered memory. Each of you left behind, embraced now by distance; from which I may regard, with detached perspective, the folly of erstwhile excess and the dry ache of ancient deprivation. What was I thinking? The unkept promises, the self-pitying dramas, the cruel indecisions….
Love letter # 506 What do you say when someone notices that you keep looking away? I thought about lying. Instead, I just said, “Because it’s hard to look at you.” What is it about the body – its presence, its lines, its promise – that obliterates other niceties? I pushed the plate aside. “Not…
Love letter # 482 Once we sang along. We were amazing. We did amazing things. Did we ever believe it, or did we always know? Look now in the mirror, my love…there is the truth of us. In cold glass. Our ordinary outcome. We said a lot of things. They did not come to pass….
On observing the brutality of time
A non-descript morning. Solo coffee, people watching. No hint of rupture. And then it happens. Two strangers. Him old, her young, side by side at the counter. I see him look at her. She does not flinch. Does not notice. He bows his head. I sense what he senses. The ocean. He scuffs along, elderly,…
Love letter # 695 There is no control; at most, precious little. Moments like this seem to emerge, whole, shining, from the greater whole. Now there is disruption. A smooth trajectory interrupted. Yours was the merest incursion. The fraction it took. A breeze, rattling doors. New sounds in the house. This morning I woke with…
Love letter # 376 I want to take you home, so that we can remove our masks. Here, we are actors. Away from this noise, we will speak truly once more. Now, they endeavour to infect us, by accident or design. Later, we shall cure ourselves of the ubiquitous malady with the honesty of presence…
Love letter # 456 The beauty of it is subtle. Light slowly creeping into a room. Scent of a flower rising in the air. A gradual emergence of change, of anticipation. There’s a Japanese word – fuubutsushi – look it up; it describes how I feel now that you are on the scene. It is…
Love letter # 616 “I’m not opposed.” you said. How was I meant to proceed after that? Sure, it was consent, an allowance, but it wasn’t even lust, let alone love. I had courted you, and in the process my desire had deepened beyond affection and into genuine care. And then…a first kiss. My body…
