Julia Katharina Keil

Typing.…

You’re online.

I’m online.

We’re on…line.

Connected for a brief moment through a virtual reality

Our retinas reflect each others words.

I feel closer to you. I pine.

I somehow feel a flutter at the thought of you looking at your phone as I look at mine.

And yet… you’re not texting me.

I texted you.

My words were the last to know.

Still sitting their perched under your words

Dangling their feet in the empty space below.

So…why won’t you text me back?

Were my words not good enough?

Did the way I worded my words wear you off or worry you?

Perhaps I was too forward.

Perhaps it’s all too new.

Perhaps I’m being silly

You must be busy

Or you’re simply thinking about me too…

You’re still online.

I want to be where you are.

Want to sit right beside you holding hands with our hand helds

OFFLINE

I’ll stay here for a little while longer

Hover in this still born connection till it turns and breathes again to..

Typing…

I see you.

Typing..

I anticipate.

I wait.

My finger lingers over the light glow of my technological extension

Contemplating its next move, my mind an open glove in pursuit of that thought you’re about to drop and once you do I’ll make sure to put you in that waiting room too before my status turns to…

Typing…

You stop. You start..

You change with the status.

Typing… online…typing..online…typing… online…

Last seen today at 23:54.

Nothing. A connection gone with a flick of a finger.

It’s that easy. I’m left disconnected in my connection. Connecting dots in my mind with whys, wondering what happened. I lost you again.

I miss the days when our conversations would flow

We’d bounce back and forth like ping pongs on heat.

Our fingers tapping to steady tempos translating transient thoughts.

While always always..typing..

We’d type from morning till night.

I’d text you from today

You’d text me from yesterday.

Time was left impotent

Our fingers were our foreplay

Skipping through the alphabet to our heartbeats

Hardly thinking about what next to say

Rousing smiles with each send.

Sharing videos, music, pictures and poetry

Either way

We’d be typing.…

These days

Our love lays at our fingertips.

We tap screens to communicate our desires

Expect fires to grow in the vacuum of an app

And although sparks may fly, they die by a simple

Tap. 

Love

Love, it doesn’t last so long

Before you know it, it’s gone

Whichever way it hits

It leaves you in a ditch and

You think to hell with all this kitch that you were previously pitching with

Then you’re at a dead end

Once again on the mend

Wondering what next love parcel cupid might send and

You become embittered for a while

The sour after taste of the relationship waste

Hardens your smile and clenches your teeth and

With every next soul you may meet

You breathe in sharp, the air around you remains tart

Tasting of what was

But then perhaps at some point the tart becomes sweet and

You decide to stay between the sheets

Surprisingly seduced, shaken, not stirred

By a new kind of human beat

And then you find

You voluntarily leave those old suitcases behind

And you let dust settle, carpeting the memory of the former,

You begin packing for the new

And you know you can’t predict what you might find

Know that this. may.be.it.

Just another connection current passing through

Another one for free for that L.O.V.E.

To whisk you about for a while but never quite going that extra mile to

Complete you

But what if completion

Is just a depletion

A pre-ordained fiction

You project on your expectation of

The other

And so what if you got it all wrong

This wayward love song

This you do not do the things you do properly

You do not do what I want you to

You do not do anything new so that doing doings doesn't do it for me

Do you see?

See me? See me. See, see, see

See yourself for awhile

And maybe in some way

You’ll see that its all o.k.

And if its not yet then it will be

And maybe if you discard those seeking spring feathers

Sing for yourself today

Learn to love what loving does

And love love, not the idea of love

Love and breathe in deep its warm fumes surrounding you

Love and feel it oozing, living, growing deep inside of you

Love and see it in the things you do

Love you too

Then love another

When your heart is open

Your expectations broken

And you have spoken those words with every token of your being

I LOVE MYSELF

I LOVE MYSLEF

I LOVE

Blue

I like your like 

I like your like

And I like how alike

Your likeness is to me

I like that you liked that likable like

I presented to thee

I like even more that that like came for free

I wonder if you liked my likes

Because you really like me

Or maybe you just like

Because others liked and so you follow and see

I’d follow you in a heartbeat

I’d stamp my likes all over your likes

And like that I liked your likes

I'd like every change you make

Every photo you take

Every quote you place or deface.

I’d like every update you create

And make sure to make my own update too.

I’d like every new “tag” you’d do

Hope you’d “tag” me and I’d tag you

I’d like the songs you’d post

Knowing that from then on..

Those songs likened you

I’d like it if you “poked” me and giggle when I’d “poke" you back.

I’d squeal and squirm if you placed posts on my wall

Painting my profile with your name.

I’d like it most if you sent a “private message” to me

Perhaps asking me out for tea…

I’d like it if I could see you

And not just the latest video of you

I’d like it if I could feel you

The warmth behind the poke

A hand made out of flesh and blood

Not an outline of a blue finger icon

..is that so wrong?

I’d like to hear your voice

Responding to me voice,

Expressing our likes through our eyes

Without the glaring screen disguise…

I’d like that

Because I really like you

But for now, I’ll just like

What likens you

And like when you like things that I do..

Hoping that someday you may

Really, like

me too

I sat at the window

I sat at the window

I sat at the window and waited

I sat at the window and waited for

I sat at the window and waited for

The days decay

I wanted to know if the day by day

Would stay the same way

As any other day

But without me in it

I wanted to see if the sun would set

If the light would tease the tops of buildings

And titillate its way down each reflection

Till the day’s rays would reach their earthy tomb and swiftly

get replaced with the artificial auras of the night

So I sat at the window and waited

So I sat at the window and waited for

A change

A change in the robotic core of this city

The back back and forth and forth

Of people marching steadily to the metronomic

Beat of the flashing green and red lights

A constant reminder of our mortality, our institution

I wondered if everyone just stopped, still,

with a breath clinging on to their chests, would the beat go on

an echo in the crowded stillness

I wondered if the swarms would gradually dissipate

After the crescendo of the day

Or perhaps if I looked away

It would open up some new gateway

And suddenly everything would go backwards

I wondered, would time lose its relevance

If I just closed my eyes long enough

If I just froze an exhale on my lips

If I just shut out the outside

Would it even still exist?

Would the world go blank

Like etch-a-sketch

Easily created and with a simple shake, easily erased

And if so, would I be able to etch another

A fish tank for me to look into for a while

And watch as its inhabitants accept its glassy prison but don’t dare to grow wings and I grow weary

Until i just close my eyes

Until I just hold my breath

Until I just don’t think and let the whole thing sink

So I sat at the window and waited

So I just sat at the window and waited for

Another day

From a dinner party 

We wine

And we dine

And we inhale our way through time and
Our pockets become credit
Spent on hesitant plates
Where every bite tastes of cash
Chewing paper which lodges
Itself in your throat and leaves your stomach empty
And your mind screaming for more than this

And you want to engage but your ears are cotton wool and your soul so far
Your hand reaches for another sip of pennies to hallucinate your happiness
Contrived words forcibly fumble from your mouth and you wonder if others can tell

Wonder what your empty words must taste like as they pass from between your lips and as you do breathe weighted sounds of "how are you?" And "I'm ok" when you know that you're not
When you know that something just doesn't fit

The connection doesn't sit
Right
Anymore

For in that moment there is no release

And you succumb to defeat

And you wonder if he loves you

And you wonder if you love yourself

And you can't understand why she didn't

And you can't understand why she didn't

And you can't stand the talk that surrounds you and you wish to fade into the nothingness of your words and you wish to breathe lightly and exhale something sweet and you wish you could stop wishing and let it all go and stop being a half and become a whole

And yet after a while

You swallow

And you smile

Faces

When souls come out to play

And till the light of day

They dance it all away

And cast their faces into the nights decay

While daytime dwellers succumb to the powder of dreams

Making masks from memories

Formed with each instant

Time benders

Music makers

Character shakers

Flamboyant fakers

Heartbreakers

Givers and takers

Self searchers

Word worshipers

Shape shifters

Liquid lovers

And disco diamond dancers

Free to jump shadows

And lock lips with life

As hungry eyes float by

Feasting on the ecstasy of beating hearts

Pounding

Under the cloak of night’s spell

Under the veil of tales untold

Under the knowing of not knowing

Until time trickles into reality

Into glazed eyes

With the dawning of day

And creatures fumble frantically

For those faces they cast away 

The grains of time

Those grains of time

confine what’s mine

into something which was never really there

into something which laid bare

is all you ever wanted

and all you never had

Maybe time is a fad

it passes us by as quickly as more time replaces it

so that we can’t recall the last

The past is the past

each grain drops down

the looking glass

to the steady beat of a clock 

and we watch it fall below

those grains we so desperately

fumble to collect and posses

yet we still ask

where does the time go

For what good is grasping at grains

when we know that all is fleeting

when we know that as long as our hearts keep beating grains

fall from the ceiling and

every breath...

is a step

and every breath...

is a step

and every breath that we take

is something we create

exhaling grains

inhaling dust

into our veins

the remnants of moments

those moments

we are victim to

those moments

break our hearts in two

because we know we can’t keep them

because what good is grasping at grains

and what good is trying to pretend

that time mends and

sends those grains to a place for safe keeping

because we can’t put a lid on the past

and we can’t take hold of air

we can only keep breathing grains

and pray that they

might one day

last

The roadside sellers

Ulan Bator, Mongolia 

Flashes of silhouettes that pass by like blinkers
Faces that form too quickly to figure
Out in the middle of nowhere
Those specks decorate the rocky roads that carry them.
Squinting eyes can’t decipher them until they magnify and appear
By your side, framed in the outline of your windowpane.
Each figure dangles plastic filled with an uncertain entity or a questionable cup in hand.
They stand.
They perch.
They sell.
Statues that sell.
And faces; dark faces with furrowed brows protecting them from the unforgiving sun
pass by
and by.