Marble
I haven't finished reading any of your books yet. I dream of them a little more each day. Even though I know your storylines keep falling apart, I finally bought that Jil Sander1 coat.
I think I've finally stopped denying myself stupid things. I'll hide behind virtue, modesty, indecency. Then I'll pull out a thousand hairs just to prove that none of those things really exist.
I don't know if I've earned your words. I wouldn't do anything to you anyway. And if I sometimes let go of anger out of laziness, it's just upbringing. There's nothing I can do about that either.
On paper we should probably kill each other. Yet I keep searching for PDFs where someone said exactly that. So many rules I cling to obsessively, only so that someone would say something back.
Show me why you still count on me. How do you know what I'll be worth.
And I'm a little ashamed that without you I'm nobody. That I can't sing about it anymore. That I no longer have a reason to decay.
And I'm a little sorry that without you I'm made of steel. That I can't play about it anymore. That I no longer have a reason to play.
Maybe someone will say I'm humble. That little Kuba is timid and shy but honest. A lisping thought chases me saying it's all debatable, that he's afraid of love and happiness and good fabric.
I'll still write that I love you, and that I love your dog. I'll admit in advance that I don't like parsley. And that I no longer care about the Desiderata2 or Rota3. I'm done with all the quaintness. Pezet4, I'm out.
Beat me and fight me and leave me when I finally part with this fucked-up mood.
The mood for pleasure, the mood for white ground under my feet and marble. Because if all I ever had were quartz slabs, with you I have marble.
1 Jil Sander: German minimalist fashion designer known for understated luxury, clean lines, and expensive basics. Her aesthetic: "less is more" perfected. The coat as symbol of allowing oneself quality, ending self-denial disguised as virtue.
2 Desiderata: 1927 prose poem by Max Ehrmann, offering earnest life advice ("Go placefully amid the noise and haste"). Often posted on dorm room walls. Here, rejected as too quaint, too safe—outdated spiritual guidelines for a life that requires different rules.
3 Rota: 1908 Polish oath-poem by Maria Konopnicka, expressing defiance against Germanization. Set to music, it became an unofficial anthem of Polish resistance. Rejecting it signals rejection of nationalistic pieties and prescribed forms of Polish identity.
4 Pezet: Polish rapper (Paweł Kapliński) from the duo Płomień 81, pioneer of Polish conscious hip-hop in the 2000s. "Pezet, I'm out" references his track "Idę w to" (I'm going into it)—here inverted as a farewell to cultural references themselves.