Happy Birthday Cokey: Crummy desks and Reasons

I would be lying if I didn't admit that I've become tormented by a new hesitancy when I write, or before I write. I think my voice is changing again. Every few months something happens and the words that once flowed like water dry up. Forgive the overused metaphor, but it's true. When I pull for the words, they no longer feel natural. The sentences I write no longer feel like things I should write, or the things that are me. So why do I write them? Well, everybody's got to do something, and doing something, even if it's an unnatural thing, is infinitely better than doing the alternative, nothing. But this isn't a problem right now because my head and my heart are full of Coks aka Cokey.

Those of you who've been with me since the beginning will remember when you first met Cokey. I remember when I introduced her to you. I was quite young at twenty and two, and I was insistent that women could be handsome too.

The Dynamics of Keira Knightley's face - The Handsome Paradox

Enter Cokey

In primary school I believed that Cokey was the height of beauty and good breeding. Her skin is the colour of the flesh of a mango and her limbs are long and supple. As if all of that weren't enough, back then, she towered over me by more than a head. What can I say? I had good taste.

Afam: If someone called you handsome what would you think?


Coks: Me? As in a girl, handsome? 

Afam: Yah.

Coks: Personally I'd be fine... lol.

Coks: I'd assume the person had used the wrong word.

Coks: Don't call a girl handsome.
  
Afam: Would it be a compliment or...?

Coks: It really depends on how chilled she is as a person.

So as I was saying, presently, my head and my heart are full of Cokey. It is her birthday today and there's a voice within me serenading her and it's a shame, because the songs it's singing are terrible. They're like my poetry, physical, shallow, and too try hard to be anything worth singing about. I suppose a few of them are sweet but that's mostly the fault of Taylor Swift. I listen to her every now and then. I must apologise for the personal put down there. It isn't good to put yourself down, but I do. I suppose my poetry is honest at the time that it is written and it is that that makes it worthy of record and not anything else. And back to Cokey.

There aren't many who ask after me as sweetly as she. There aren't many who listen as intently as she. And there aren't many who live as selflessly as she. Her smile is quick, her mind is often foggy, but her hand is sure. She's an architect now. She got her degree this summer, but the truth is that doesn't mean shit. She didn't need a degree to tell her that she was good enough. I look at the building she designed from time to time and wonder about it. She's my age but she's already built something that could outlive the both of us.

So I'm here, sitting at my crummy desk, thinking about how lucky I am to know her. She makes me want to be better, and that is reason enough for anything.

Happy Birthday Cokey.