As long as everything is neat and tidy, there’s little reason for anyone to be too concerned about the life of another. Do you really care? About the young mother you pass heading in to the grocery store, who still took the time to try to hold the door open for you Continue reading
Category Archives: Tifa
The Dishonesty In Distance by Tifa
Dear you,
Instinctually and reflexively I want to ask you to stop treating me so well and being so good to me. It’s hard to feel as though I deserve all the goodness and light you bring to my life, but at the same time I couldn’t bear to be without it having now experienced it. We may be temporarily separated by many, many miles, but when we talk I don’t feel it. Continue reading
Sciamachy by Tifa
Sci·am·a·chy noun [sahy-am–uh-kee]: an act or instance of fighting a shadow or an imaginary enemy.
Like a light bulb. Flicker, flickers on.
Treating myself, like:
I wish you would have. Love.
Everyone reaches for the light switch
When there’s a blackout.
I know I’m not alone in my habit.
Even though we all know it won’t work out.
There’s just no energy from which to draw
So I count my steps.
To avoid unnecessary shadows.
14 forward.
3 to the left.
Half a step, line it up.
Reach out tentatively
And find my stash.
Grip the glass
Light a candle.
I never even heard the light bulb POP and die
When the power came back on.
The day had already broken and my candle wasn’t even half melted.
Waves by Tifa
Four years riding a wave of love: that’s what it was like, being with you. The highs were high, but the lows pulled me down, down, down: drowning.
Four years: a lifetime, it seems. But now you are out of my life. The waters have calmed and I the sea is peaceful, inviting. Gentle rolling waves beckon. No more highs, no more lows. No more you.
Four years: some might say I gave up. Did I? Not I. I, who would stand by your side, always loyal, always there. I did not see that I was the strong one all along.
When the waves began to frighten me with their power, to pull me under so that I lost my footing, my balance, my sanity: then I saw the truth. It was not that I did not care about you. You did not care: About yourself. About me. I knew then that I would be left to ride the waves alone, and that is not how I want to live my life.
Waves: from a distance, so beautiful, so powerful, so appealing! I wanted to ride them with you. But that same power and beauty turned out to be deceptive. Waves are dangerous. Beguiling. If you cannot trust your partner, you are safer to ride them alone. One false step is one too many: it took me four years to learn this.
Oh, you would say, we are together, we are one. But I began to see that you were on your own path. I could come along, but in the end you would leave me in your wake. I gave. You took. I believed in you, in us. You believed too – in you.
Four years: how does this happen? How does a love built on solid ground become an unstable ride on dark, icy seas? How does love turn to treachery? How did this happen to us? To me? What did I not see?
Four years: in the beginning, you made me whole. You taught me how to shine. You found my best parts and taught me how to use them. Then you used me. But you also taught me to believe in myself, and soon I did. In the end, this saved me from the plunge into uncertain icy waters, into darkness, into the abyss.
Four years: how, after you had made me whole, made me love you and made me believe I loved myself, how did it come to this?
Each wave was a hazardous ride. The exhilaration of riding side by side with you had once strengthened me; somehow, this turned into fear. Instead of joy, there was terror. You were riding the wave alone, after all. I thought you were my safety net. More often than not, I was yours.
Four years: they seem like a lifetime. But my life is not over yet. I can face the seas alone now, knowing that I am strong enough to master them myself. The white foamy sea, the powerful tug of the universe, the ability to ride things out and remain standing and victorious: these are now mine.
When I choose to let someone else into my life, I will be wiser. All because of four years
Four years with you.
Noah by Tifa
In order to understand this, you must first learn who Noah really is.
I have a rare full night of sleep in me, and somewhere to be. The late construction shifts had been starting to grate on me, making me feel like I was living in reverse, going to work when others were going to dinner, going home when people were waking up. I had jumped at the opportunity to take on a day shift, but I don’t know what to expect from this one. I finally decided to quit one of my two jobs, I never really needed the money anymore since my wife died, but I liked being busy. When you’re busy you tend to forget to think about anything other than the job you’re doing. It also really helped that all of my jobs required me to be in loud spaces.
I sleepwalk through my bathroom and dressing routine, my eyes finally opening once I am on the bus. And then there it is, the banner that has been hanging up for the last month “Sassy’s doing Breakfast, starting May 1st. Steak and Eggs, 7am to 3pm.” There is already smoke curling out of the kitchen vent, and the low thump of bass seeping through the walls. The cook must have figured out how to turn on the stereo, the new system that I had told him to stay away from. Playing his cousin’s death metal band.
He had made a pot of coffee, so I put off the lecture that he wouldn’t hear anyway. Damn, if this wasn’t a loud system. Clear, even sound in any corner of the place, bass that felt like each seat had its own subwoofer. The mixing board was the shiniest thing in this place. As soon as I turn off the cook’s playlist I see Liza on her stool behind the bar.
“Doors open in fifteen, Honey. Turning the lights down in a few.” I had never seen the place with the overhead lights on, much less Liza. She was enough in the dark, a mountain of a woman with the grace and smile of a garbage truck. The best bartender in the Tri-state area, Sassy’s arm-wrestling champ 7 years running, and a source of knowledge of all the things you don’t want to know.
“Good morning, sweetheart!” I try a happy greeting on a frowning Liza.
“I’m not your sweetheart, and if the girls don’t show soon you’re going to have your dancing debut. Show me what a sweetheart is and finish mopping the stage.” By finish mopping, she means start mopping. The empty yellow bucket is already up on the stage. I know the secret mop water recipe: cold water halfway up the side, two caps of bleach and half pint of beer. The bleach takes care of what Liza so lovingly calls “stripper juice”, and the beer gives the floorboards a little traction and covers the bleach smell. Another Liza-ism, “The only thing more suspicious than a smiling cop is a clean smelling strip club.”
Five minutes to open. Shiny mirrors reflecting dim neon lights, hip-hop rumbling back to the sizzling stove full of beef, and an almost non-frowning bartender. All we need is the talent. The closer it gets to opening the more I feel she wasn’t joking about putting me on stage.
The front door opens, slicing a line of morning light through the dark room. The figure in the door pauses, then walks towards me. The door slams, my eyes adjust to the darkness again, and that’s where I lose it. Kendra, my wife dead all these years, stands at the foot of the stage. She looks just like the day I met her, brown hair hanging just over her big, deep eyes. She’s here, finally here to take me away from my meaninglessness and misery. I drop the mop, almost drop to the floor myself, and she smiles and says, “I’m Tequila, the new dancer. You alright?”
“Um, uh, yeah. Yeah, fine. Thought you were a ghost.”
“Ghost, huh? I don’t know her. Sounds like she works at one of those rocker strip clubs on the East side. Think a girl can get a breakfast steak before I start dancing?” I tell her I will ask if the cook is ready. I point her to the dressing room and pick up the mop. This breakfast shift is going to be weirder than I thought.
“Come on, Noah.” Liza is right behind me, reaching for the mop on the ground. “Let’s finish polishing this turd. Sassy’s is open for breakfast.”
Kuwait Writing Club 