Alex Oppus

“Perhaps you’re fascinated
by the contours of my cheeks
with skin like bed sheets that
hide all of the complexities of what’s underneath,
and present an image of simplicity
(that is easier to digest than
skipping heart beats for hairy legs).

I wonder if
these next six nights
of not having to feel
so alone will make you
wondrous in keeping me
as a bedside table:
to place your hard times on
before you get the forty winks
your eyes need
to glisten in the midday light of my
bedroom.

And it’s hard to
fall back into sleep
when I’ve fallen in love
with studying the one that lies next to me.
I wonder if you’ve found landscapes in my
elbows like I’ve found
ebbing tides in your forehead.

Perhaps your love for me is fleeting,
and you’ll have moments where you
consider tearing yourself even further apart,
but as soon as it’s possible
you close your eyes again,
fall out of the thought
and back into sleep.

But, perhaps you’ll keep me as a bedside table:
to place your brain things in my cupboards,
to place your step dad in my cupboards,
to place your sad eyes in my drawers,
to put your heart ache in my
mouth, your desire for love in bite marks on my
neck, and your misty breath in my
ears

whispering ‘you are so important to me’.
-Bedside Table”
― Lucas Regazzi

“Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.

"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
― Vladimir Nabokov