vit färg

The past. It’s so still.

It is my intention to listen, but my hands keep giggling while reminding me I don’t get to be a human being for very long, as if this were the punchline to a joke whose first half I missed. I arrived too late. I typically arrive about three years too late. I wish I had been able to sit in that white, aromatic kitchen and look you in the face, but I was not ready. I was still on my way.

“I am still plucking you from my hair. / I am still unwinding my DNA from your / netted helix. I am still.”

“You still crave lemonade, but the taste doesn’t satisfy you as much as it used to. You still crave summer, but sometimes you mean summer, five years ago.”

“It is August: the true ending of a year. I’ve grown sick from trying to love who I am.”

“You realize, at last, that you can change without disappearing, that all you had to do was wait until the storm passes you over and you find that—yes—your name is still attached to a living thing.”

“I suppose I love this life, in spite of my clenched fist.”

I’m not feeling strong yet, but I am taking good care of myself. The weather is perfect. I read and walk all day and then walk to the sea. I expect to swim soon. For now I am content. I am not sure what I hope for. I feel I am doing my best. It reminds me of when I was sixteen dreaming of Lorca, the gentle trees outside and the creek. Perhaps poetry replaces something in me that others receive more naturally. Perhaps my happiness proves a weakness in my life. Even my failures in poetry please me. Time is very different here. It is very good to be away from public ambition. I sweep and wash, cook and shop. Sometimes I go into town in the evening and have pastry with custard. Sometimes I sit at a table by the harbor and drink half a beer.