Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It has been more than a fortnight or three since my last confessions. Wow, has school ever kept me busy! Since last we spoke I had visited Sao Paulo, BR and Monterrey, MX for school and then started this whole whirl of a career change. I now work for a large global company in a challenging (yes! finally!) financial leadership position. I am also working on my schedule to complete Six Sigma certification. A lot has changed in the last six months, and I somehow feel.....lighter. I haven't been able to stop smiling lately.
Anyway, I'm backlogged on posting, so here's another piece I wrote some time back. I am quite empathetic, so don't worry--nothing actually happened to me. But if it had, it would probably feel like this....I quite simply call this one "Todd".
A whisper, a glance, a thought-provoken stare.
Incriminating eyes I turn back towards you in hopes of
violently penetrating your most vulnerable orifice,
filling the void of morality inside you with utter
devastation.
You brought about this ecocide.
You walked into my being and proceeded to tarnish its
gleam with your oxidation greedy of lust. Any hope I
had left you dismembered and discarded its ash in your
icy waters of betrayal.
With your blunted, rusty butcher knife you etched a
scarlet letter on my innocence and minced every
passion I could ever fathom into your languid,
lackluster stew of mediocrity....
....never to stir, only to sit, until it cooled enough
to be eaten by apathy.
Where once in each of my windows a short, white candle
once burned, illuminating the trail of jubilation
hidden amongst the thicket of deception, you
extinguished the guides, one by one, and now nothing
inside me can find its way home.
I had worked so hard to build this elegant house of
infinite cards, but with one breath you leveled it
into a jumbled chaos of red and black.
How dare you even cast a glance in my direction? What
right do you possess?
With my own two hands I constructed a sturdy bridge of
oak. For years I spent endless, scorching days out
here building, my hands raw and crimson from the
splinters lodged in my flesh, persevering the agony to
construct a wonderous masterpiece.
You stood on the other shore calculating, and with the
flick of a single match, you burned it all down to the
very ashes it had once from arisen. Your hollow,
hideous, menacing laugh resonating amongst the flames,
I watched my very essence disintegrate into a wisp of
charcoal.
Now I am stone.
Here is a photo of Ahmet and me during our last night in Shanghai. Ahmet was a particularly special colleague of mine from my first global team because our friendship blossomed from various conversations about life, love, and business. His Turkish background intrigued me, and his serious, reserved demeanor was often peppered by my terrible singing of They Might Be Giants' "Instanbul", cartwheels, and all sorts of debauchery in Europe. We shared a fantastic dinner in Rotterdam with enough food to serve the Romanian army, and I will always treasure our introspective conversations from the past two years.
