The Left Chamber

 Dostoevsky on the table.

White Nights on my lap.

He watches

the Marlboro cigarette

hanging from my lips.

He stares too long

and spits on me

like his white night.

The white night

doesn’t allow rest.

Every night

it hangs over my heart

whenever I read

the word

throbbing.

I want to close the book.

But my heart whispers—

don’t.

If you close it

I won’t let you sleep.

Still, I shut the book.

I tell my heart:

go away like her.

Don’t come back.

You never loved me.

You loved her.

Leave me

with my head.

I sit before the desktop.

Type:

naked women images

Bodies float

across the screen

as I scroll.

The stars appear

like scalpels.

The body irritates me.

I roar at it.

The body replies:

You want to stop

lying to yourself.

So I take a scalpel.

In the dusty room

I arrange

an operation theatre.

I open my heart.

Blood spreads everywhere.

The right chamber—

quiet.

The left chamber—

the problem lives there.

It keeps repeating

her name.

Repeating.

Repeating.

I realise

it will never stop.

So I throw the scalpel

into the void.

I take a bottle

from the shelf.

A cigar pack.

A glass.

One drink.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

The bottle continues

pouring itself

into the night.

The cigar pack

half empty.

The bottle

completely gone.

I take a pen.

The paper waits.

For thirty-four seconds

the pen moves—

then suddenly

scribbles her name.

I stare

at the page.

The dust in the room

stares back.

Then I realise—

this pen

was born

to touch her body.

I write her

again and again.

Her body

spilling across the paper

until the page

is full of her.

And my body

forgets

how to breathe.

I fall

unconscious

on the chair.

After a while

a sparrow

flies through the window.

It lands

on my shoulder

and whispers

“Lie.”