I've been meaning to write to you all day, all year, all my life, but you know me… I always feel like putting pen to paper might ruin the magic. So I just took a walk instead.
I haven’t been down there for such a long time, and I’m not really sure why my steps carried me that way. I was thinking about the park across the street. I was crossing the street and, all of a sudden, I was walking down those slippery steps, my hand not finding anything to grab onto for the illusion of stability. It was dark, as I remembered it. Or maybe as I imagined it. And hot, and I’m sure I can’t put that all on the relentless September sun. My head was throbbing, one of those killer headaches I blame my silence on, the ones that left you on the outside, with no window, not even a keyhole into what I’m not writing. It was brutal, our agreement, I know. But if things were to work, you needn’t be privy to what I wasn’t writing. And I thought it was going to work. Or maybe you did. Or perhaps we were both fools.
Anyway, there were more steps than I remembered. I haven’t been down there in a long time. In the dim light that managed to escape the narrow entrance and follow me down, the walls were soft and moist, and I could hear my blood rushing as I tried to steady my feet on the timeworn steps. Not so much time, not so much traffic, but worn nevertheless. It fits the downward journey, so I never really questioned it. And maybe that’s why I never invited you in. Who’d want to leave the sunny September air to go underground, where the only sounds are the echo of my fears and the wailing of my shortcomings. Where the only light that comes in from a neon barely reaches the padded floor through the weird crack in the roof.
I descended slowly, thinking that I should go back every other step or so. The further I went, the wetter the silence, like stalactites and stalagmites hungry to close a bloody mouth around me. And in this silence, I heard your voice. I knew it in my bones, without remembering it in my head. It’s been too long. I was so sure I kept you out, and there you were. There is no better place for your voice to call me from.
I descended further, following the slow pulse in the cushioned walls. I wanted to go back, but you were calling for me still, and the steps back up disappeared behind me in a cinematic puff of smoke. If this movie had a smell, it would smell like you. Fresh white sheets, regular soap, no perfume. Early sweat from your morning matches. Maybe rain. I know how rain smells, but I don’t know about you. I never let you come close enough. But there you were, with your sweet smell.
I wanted to keep going, deeper still. I never wanted to stop going. But the steps stopped. My bare feet were sinking in the clammy floor of my heart, where your feet never walked, but I was walking now in your footprints. I knew you wouldn’t be there and that I couldn’t summon you by sheer hope, not after making so many efforts to keep you out. But I found you there. And I knew I would never go back up those stairs.
I’ve been meaning to choose you all day, all year, all my life, but you know me… I always feel like my heart is not the right place for guests. So I just wrote this to you instead.
>>>>>>>
Prompted by the lyrics below:
“Intr-o zi o sa-mi duci dorul/Chiar daca inima nu-ti vrea/Si-ai s-alergi printre-atatea locuri/Unde de-obicei era/Inima mea”
Nice and quiet, my gaze and my gait. I tread lightly, breathe shallow, insufficient air and keep ever so still. I present perfectly rehearsed choreographies that do not disturb the order put into things before I was a thing, this thing, just another speck of lost, inconsolable dust. I forget my name, but answer every call.
Do you like me yet?
Nice and quiet, my mind and my voice. I sleepwalk into walls I've built to keep me out of dreams, alluring and eerie like tiny deaths. Words roar in the back of my throat, mighty waves that fade dizzily, no witnesses and no surprises. The comfortable and the unasked carry on blithely, while I rot in rhymes easy on the ears.
Do you want me still?
Nice and quiet, my heart and my flesh. I bleed invisible blood and cry minuscule tears that flood hushed longings. I fall to pieces in the dead of night, without a noise and without the recognition, sorrow seeping silence and screaming still. I break again and again, hiding cracks in plain sight, behind a buoyant, brittle bouquet.
I forgive you
for eating that last toffee and not feeling sorry about it
for thinking a fever is fire enough to bring him back
for your messy writing
for letting her words spoil your longing
for feeling like a winner when he tongue kissed you that first time
for holding your tongue when you should have yelled
for yelling when you should have listened
for listening when you should have known better
for sneaking out in the middle of the night
for not dancing for a long time
for holding her too tight
for not letting her hold you
for not smiling in photos
for crying and for not crying
for wishing you’d vanish, for wishing they would
for not being there when they did
for neglecting your rollerblades and your body
for muffling your soul
for wanting answers nobody has
for not asking the questions you were afraid of
for running away and for staying too long
for losing your way
for loving a crooked love, a broken one, a puzzled love
for being stubborn and staying stuck
for not telling your truths, for not knowing them as they are
I’m sorry, I lied. I can’t forgive you just yet (except for that toffee)
I hope you’ll forgive me. Tell the shadows I’m home
Running my fingers over open wounds, prodding them, gauging them, stroking them, warm blood rushing to meet me, shy pain and tenderness. Resting in all the small deaths I die each day. Twenty thousand or so out breaths, a blanket of yellowed leaves letting up to gravity, a sunset. A sigh for each thought I cannot let pass me by before dreams take over. Reaching out for whatever awaits when gashes heal and I’ve arrived. Home? Courting shadows, half hoping they will turn away because they’re all me and I should have known them better. Resting in the way we dance when I turn up, each step stumbling me closer. Reaching out after the end. Resting. Reaching
I hold my breaths. Will never blink
again
Pluck sighs with timid fingers
Hoard darkness from all the holes
in socks, in hearts, in roofs
Arrange letters into silent mornings,
cutting deep into starved flesh
and pouring
blood, dripping
coffee into poems
others wrote,
from me to you
Swallow suns, throbbing over remote lands,
unlived lives made brighter,
not forgiving
Hum songs off-key and on repeat
like mantras, like wicked spells
whispered to knot
my insides into drops of fire
into winds
Count smiles and half smiles
and belly laughs
and tears
I wanted to wipe
and ghosts
I wanted to chase away
Write memories out loud
on window sills too low to fall
(but when did that stop me anyway?)
Sink streams and puddles and rivers and oceans
that ripple, babble, splash, spurt, run, gush
dribble, spout, drizzle, trickle, drip, rush
in my veins, salt and sweet
on life support
Crash into a cloud and keep it
for my own, my own fall
Tame tongues, soft, soul storming
so strange
my name is distant colored when they call
my voice fading, no, roaring
my mouth so fucking full of you
Sift ungodly hours, moonless and moving
for the waiting. The wishing, too
Catch leftover light
with my bare bones, bruised and burning
I stretch my skin, new limbs expand
out of my seams
I break and mend with everything I saved,
save all I’ve lost,
and keep them safe
within,
outwith these storms I rain
And now I’m left with all this life
to give me wings, to hold you tight
I breathed. I blinked.
Again
“Let’s play a game,” Chance said. “You are random and stardust and you’ll try to tame me and understand me. I’ll take you places and get you stuck. There are no rules, so don’t you bother. The better you learn them, the faster they change. You have no choice, but you will go about your days as if you are more and you deserve it all. Or none at all. You’ll trade moments for memories and tears for whatever you let touch you. You’ll forget and be forgotten and learn that being someone’s memory is not the worst way you could lose. Lose, you will and you’ll remember all its crushing weight. You’ll break open, break through and call it life. You’ll break apart, break down and call it love. You’ll gamble it to the edge of the world and come back against all hope, again and again. You’ll dream, eyes wide shut and be forgiven. And, if it’s not broken, you’re not using it right, your heart.”
“Unclench your fists, embrace your all,” Choice whispered, “this is your only chance.”
I dreamed of a hug. You were barefoot, I was flying. It was the embrace before the world turned upside down and beginnings began anew. It was tight and long and long overdue. You steadied my heart, I wrapped myself around your soul. You were the sea, I was the sky and feelings roamed golden where we touched. Bitter souls urged us to stop chasing, the horizon is wicked and luring by always slipping away. Blood proved them wrong, a sliver of a breath now pressed between us. Colored in shades of arriving, we turned a soft moment into forever
Heavy, like drops with all the light they cannot hold. Blinding, like flecks with all the rain they cannot pour. Between me and the world, my fucking thoughts
The house stood small and slouching in the forgotten garden, with time-stricken walls and buckled carpentry against the shiny residential complex and its construction noises. The narrow walkway paved with river stone had been taken over by weeds long ago, and the rusty fence, mended here and there, did a steady job in keeping foes, as well as friends at a distance. A rose bush alone, tended for and in full bloom, confirmed a living soul still haunted the dying house.
An old man, white hair in disarray and sunken eyes, was leaning on the kitchen sink, water making its way through a babel tower of plates and bowls and pots and pans. He reached for a fork and a plate in the sink and, after a quick wash, he turned last night’s leftovers into some kind of lunch. He made his way through the dimly lit house, with only the creaks of the wooden floors as company, stopping for a breath or two in front of a framed photo of a young couple in tones of sepia and happiness. His slender fingers caressed the frame, then wiped away a solitary tear. The plate in his left hand shook with the weight of solitude.
The living room looked deserted under undisturbed layers of dust and the grayed sheets protecting skeletons of muted furniture. Only the couch was still visible, worn-out and cluttered with pillows and a blanket, faded and threadbare. Big enough for eight, the living room table was hidden under a pile of crumbs and only one chair kept it company.
The long screech of the gate made the old man frown, tears and lunch caught in his throat. Soon a skinny silhouette taunted the soft pour of the midday sun through the garden side window.
“Hey, gramps!” the boy greeted, somewhat cautious. He fumbled with a plastic bag, then stepped out of his shoes by the door and into the living room.
“Told you I don’t need anything,” the hoarse voice answered, replacing the tired sound of fork on plate.
“It’s nothing, really, and some dinner. Mom said to tell you it’s Sunday tomorrow, in case you’re tempted to make plans without us.”
“As if you’d let me forget…”
“What was that? Happy to join us, you say?” the kid went on with the banter, scratching himself ungainly behind one knee. “Don’t give me that look, it’s the stupid nettle. And your gate almost killed me, you know, when it finally opened…”
“Yet here you are, yapping away my peace…”
“I take after you, that’s what mom says when I’m driving her bonkers… Twice a day and then at noon…”
“Twice a day and then at noon…” the grandfather mumbled softly, half a breath behind the kid. He was now looking up from under his bushy eyebrows to the spitting image of his younger self, all legs and smug. “Go on, get out of here, let me be already!”
Hands clasped in his lap, eyes watery again, the old man followed the lanky boy through the open window.
“Gramps,” the kid yelled back from the garden, with a grin, “there’s a cat under your rose bush. Looks like it didn’t get the memo.”
“That makes two of you,” he answered, under his breath, getting up with a groan, but looking like a man with a plan. Walking stick in hand, he went straight to the cat, all curled up and lazy in the shade. He was shooing and waving his hands and stomping his good leg to send the uninvited guest away. The cat heeded him not, slumber undisturbed, but for the white flower flies catching in the lush black fur.
“I look like an idiot to you, don’t I? Here you are, barging into my house, into my life, clueless and all entitled. This doesn’t end here, you hear me?” But the cat didn’t hear and didn’t seem to care either.
“I’ll let you to it, then, and we’ll see you tomorrow. Bring candy and your best self,” the kid waved over the fence with a mischievous wink.
Sunday family lunches used to be the highlight of the week, full of stories and laughter and not one, not two, but three types of dessert. French toast, the old man’s favorite, to be savored with a pinch of salt before or crunchy brown sugar after, always ruled over everything from the white platter with golden dandelions on the rim. The spring past, the six of them turned to five, daughter and husband, the smart-ass teen and his sunny haired younger sister, the widower and an empty chair. And now he had to look his best and put on a smile big enough to thwart any significant questions and to reassure them he was fine, of course, as fine as he could be and no, he didn’t need anything, anything at all. He had never been a good actor, though, and small talk kept getting smaller and awkward silences longer. From starter to chocolate cake, the passing of heaped plates around was met with a heartbeat skipped whenever he turned first to his right, where she used to sit, all smiles and joy, for the better part of the last five decades. French toast would never taste the same again and that made him even sadder.
And now there was the business of the damned black cat, who bugged him beyond measure, to the obvious amusement of everybody around. Every Sunday, for the last three or four or them, he would show up covered in black long hairs, with the purring machine sound asleep under his arm, oblivious to the uncomfortable position, the welcoming giggles of the little girl or the calling of princess-inspired names, every time a new one. It would walk around for a bit, stretch, indulge in some scratching between the ears, maybe order some food. Then it would curl on the sofa or under the TV table for another well deserved nap. Lunch would end, goodbyes would be exchanged and the cat left behind, only to find it on his door step on Monday, 7 am sharp, sharpening its claws on the old wooden frame or sprawled in the sun, as if it owned the whole garden, hell, the entire world.
He thought that putting a good half an hour walk between him and the monster would be enough, but it looked like he met his match and the creature kept showing up. During the week, he would do his best trying to gift his unwanted housemate to one of the neighbors, praising its spotless fur or its quiet step. It was the most he had spoken in the last year or so, and he started getting tired of all the socializing, so he moved on to guerrilla tactics. He took it to the curb and tried sneaking away, but he found it waiting by the rusty gate when he got back and his limp almost disappeared in utter annoyance. He tried ignoring it, scolding it, shaming it for being ignorant of good visiting manners, so unlike the elegant cat that it was. Nothing worked. The days went by and the cat was still there, entangling itself between the old man’s legs, reaching for a pat, napping on the couch, wagging its tail every time a fork touched a plate. He was adamant to rid himself of the nuisance shedding fur all over the place, but in the meantime a bowl appeared by the foot of the living room table and fresh water filled the plastic cup on the porch every morning, it was the polite thing to do. Pats became more frequent and he would find himself with the cat on his lap, stroking the long fur, like she would have, tears gathering in the corner of his eyes.
Then, one morning, he got up to find the damned cat sleeping, without a care in the world, on her very chair on the porch. Her garden apron was on the floor and the cat was dangling its tail, insensitive and insolent and lazy in the morning sun. She used to love to sit on that chair, in that exact spot, when the sun shone just so, before the buzz of the day started. It was the final straw. Without a second thought, he grabbed the animal and headed out.
He knocked three times, loud and outraged. Before his daughter could greet him in surprise, she found herself holding the cat under a breathless tirade.
“It was fun but no it’s done. Keep the damn cat this time, will you? That’s all I need from you. Not food, not phone calls every morning, noon and evening, not mending my fence or meddling in my business. Just keep the damn cat away from me. How hard can that be, huh?”
“We can’t very well keep it tied, can we?” she managed to babble, but he wasn’t listening.
“I don’t want to see it again, you hear me? Keep it or I’ll do away with it!” By the time these words flew out of his mouth, he caught the look on his granddaughter’s face. Ashamed and silent, he turned around and walked away.
Days passed, and there was no sign of the black menace around the garden, in the shade of the rose bush, under the couch where the afternoons flowed cooler. The old man paced the length of the walkway, again and again, pulling nettle here and there, to look over the crouched fence, just to go back to the porch and sit on the chair on the left side of the small table, with his gaze lost in immeasurable distance. In a feat of inspiration, he went through the boxes lined up on the porch, from where the little bugger dragged out some scraps of fabric and the old roll of fishing wire, no scratching paw met his hand. Day after day, he kept doing his rounds, from the porch to the gate and back, pulling weeds as a cover, when all he wanted was to look deep into the street and see the damned cat coming back. He wanted to know it was safe, of course.
On Sunday morning, he woke up early, tidied the porch, folded the apron the other way around. He emptied the plastic cup and threw away the dried cat food catching flies. Running his fingers through his unruly hair, eyes filled with regret, he arrived at the family lunch half an hour early. The little girl welcomed him, excited to get a visit from the cat and her weekly supply of candy. The news that the cat wasn’t with them either worried the old man. He wanted it gone, not run over or injured in a ditch somewhere.
The lunch was more despondent than ever, the black cat was yet another matter to tiptoe around. The old man kept sneaking looks at the couch, thinking that nobody would notice, but no sign of the cat. Once dessert was out of the way, he took his doggy bag without a comment and headed home, with long strides and a bit a hope, but in vain.
The garden was silent in the afternoon sun, with the walkway now cleared of weeds leading the way to the tiny porch. The old man was sitting in his chair, hands in his lap, lost in deep thought, when the silence broke. The gate squeaked open and the four-legged patch of fur glided in. It reached the porch in several elegant steps and rubbed against the tired, waiting legs.
“Where have you been, you rascal?” His face lighted up with unashamed joy. “That’s quite an entrance you made there, who taught you to use the gate? Hungry? You look like you could use some food. Here, I’ll give you some of my French toast, it’s good. But we have to go get you some real cat food.”
Grunting with old age, but eyes smiling, the old man poured fresh water in the cup and, with a renewed spring in his step, he headed for the gate. “I have to get this oiled, if you’re all mannered now, you’ll drive me crazy with the squeaking.”
Pleased with the late lunch, the cat circled the table a couple of times, negotiating a nap.
“Not on her chair, you stinker!”, the old man shouted over his shoulder, while the cat made itself comfortable on the chair on the right. “Pfff, pardon me for calling you well-mannered. I guess Rascal it is, and you’d better answer when I call you.”
Sad whatifs in shades of pink
and the weight of wings that forgot
how to fly
make me cry
I got life, they say
Home is not inside, I checked
and all roads lead nowhere
if you don’t run them or walk
and all you do is balk
I got life, they say
Past bleeds through memory cracks
and future shines numb,
what about mine,
what to do with all this time?
I got life, they say
In between two breaths,
neither here nor there
softly lost and brave
vulnerably misbehaved
I got life, they say
Just for today
All days seemed to blend together, like the copy of a copy of a copy. The sun still rose, the curtains still breathed in a new day with a long sigh, coffee still poured hot in the chipped cup. Whenever she looked at that cup, she remembered her grandma, hands wrinkled in patterns much like the coffee stains on the tiny cracks inside, holding it tight and taking in the strong aroma, ready for a new beginning. It was the last cup left of the six in the set, the dark brown one among the other in deep tones of earth and foliage. That morning she thought it would be the only thing she would go back for if her house were on fire.
Too much thinking would always mess with her morning routine, but autopilot worked well when her headaches were late to the party. She fed the cat, brushed her teeth, and after a quick cold shower she was out the door for her morning run.
She lived right across a lush park, and for a full run the first 2 miles would take her on the cobbled streets of the neighborhood, before entering the park and going around the lake. The park always smelled fresh and cheerful in the early morning, without much audience, only a fellow runner here and there, greeting each other with a nod. A total of 8 miles, four times a week proved enough for her fitness level and to keep up with her extensive podcast subscriptions.
Breakfast was frugal, some yoghurt on the brink of expiration and some fruit, after a second shower, hot and long, to make her skin crinkle and her head clear for the day ahead.
Work was a amorphous combination of emails, useless meetings that led to more useless meetings and making nice for people. It had been like this for a good many years now, the perfect shiny cog in the corporate system, furthering the sales objectives and the inclusion and diversity values, first on paper. The clicks of the keyboard, the hum of the air conditioning and the bickering of her colleagues, under their breath were the chorus of her 10 hour work days, with some lunch and a ten minute walk around the steel and glass building, with no view. Time seemed suspended in this fish tank that drained most of her hours, ever so slowly and painfully, like dragging her feet through mud or chewing a cartilage hidden in a veal steak. She hated veal steak surprises.
It was way past office hours when she managed to turn off her laptop and sit back, eyes closed, lounging in the ergonomic office chair, imagining a beach and the sunset. The crash of waves, the salty breeze, her toes playing in the sand, everything was so bright and colourful, she could almost taste it. Whenever she felt tired, her feet would take her to the sea. Or her mind would. Two hundred fifty plus days a year of best regards, compliance trainings, office drama in exchange for three weeks of sun, salt and sand didn’t seem like a fair trade anymore. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to throw it all away, after all it was what she learned for, prepared for and even visualized herself promoted and fullfiled in five years time, which she was, briefly. But not anymore, now she felt utterly trapped, her soul crushed and her energy depleted.
She got up from her desk and made her way through the formless, breathless, colourless hallways, under the flickering neon lights. Her manager was still at his desk, looking grim under his frown, and her heart skipped a bit. With a bit of luck and a lot of hard work, he would always say at their mid and end year evaluations, she would take his place in no time. No time. He had been planning to move to the mountains and grow berries and was ready to pass the baton for as long as she could remember. Time was running out and here they both were, miserable and daydreaming.
She knocked holding her breath and he met her gaze with a tired, question like smile.
‘I quit. I want to live by the water.’
‘What are you talking about? I don’t have time for practical jokes.’
The house stands small and slouching in the forgotten garden, with time-stricken walls and buckled carpentry against the shiny residential complex and its construction noises. The narrow walkway paved with river stone had been taken over by weeds long ago, and the rusty fence, mended here and there, does a steady job in keeping foes, as well as friends at a distance. A rose bush alone, tended for and in full bloom, confirms a living soul still haunts the dying house.
An old man, white hair in disarray and sunken eyes, leans on the kitchen sink, water making its way through a babel tower of plates and bowls and pots and pans. He reaches for a fork and a plate in the sink and, after a perfunctory wash, he turns last night’s leftovers into some kind of lunch. At the sound of food, a cat appears through the kitchen door, lazy and wagging its tail in anticipation.
Man and cat make their way to the living room table, big enough for eight, but with only one chair left and a bowl at one of its feet, three meals a day in exchange for some company. Through the light filtered from the garden-side window, the room looks deserted, hidden under a layer of dust and the grayed sheets protecting skeletons of chairs, book cases, a coffee table. Only the couch is still visible, worn-out and cluttered with pillows and a blanket as old as time. The layer of breadcrumbs and the rhythmic sound of fork on plate still speak of a life. A photo, in tones of sepia and past, looks back at him from across the table, a young couple smiling back at the camera and he shies away from it, with tears caught in his throat, with all the unspoken words and the last bites of lunch.
The cat reaches out to the old man’s knee and is denied with a short, distant pat on its head and the last morsel of bread and all the sauce it can hold. He gets up and starts shuffling through boxes and all the knickknacks he still has to store away. Packing efforts are thwarted by the cat, jumping from box to box, running around with anything that can roll or be chewed on or make a noise on the barren floors, squeaking under the old man’s ungainly steps. He catches his breath as he sits on the couch, in desperation and sadness, hands on his lap, looking through tears and through the open window, with the cat rubbing against his legs.
With a grunt and his hand combing back the unruly hair, the old man grabs the photo from the table and walks out. With the cat on his tail, he stops by the rose bush, taking in the deep lush fragrance one more time, with his eyes closed. He picks one bud, a tear of red where his finger met a thorn, but he pays no attention.
With a renewed spring in his step, he heads for the gate. Confused, the cat stays behind, negotiating an afternoon nap in the poky shed, a small table and two chairs surrounded by the hushed memories in so many boxes.
‘Not on her chair, you stinker!’, the old man shouts back, before closing the gate behind him one last time.
Every room lights up with an anticipatory glow when he steps in and the hum stops. Tall and broad shouldered, he steps with poetic precision, as if an imaginary red carpet unfolds under his feet. His clothes, matched in elegant whites and grays and blacks, are nothing short of impeccable. Casual chic, he jokes, when complimented, but his smile betrays there is nothing casual about him.
He glides with ease between the state of the world economy, 90s music and child-rearing concepts, but only in groups of 6 or less, to be able to gratify everybody with his undivided attention. His voice compensates when his words fail him, inflected on the wide spectrum anywhere from an unmistakable authority on the subject matter to a delicate soul finding comfort in fluffy desserts and well-prepared cocktails.
He prefers his coffee black and accompanied by a mimosa, pampering blend of sunshine and fizz. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, along with the other two and his snacks and everything has to be prepared in minute details and savored in absolute peace and quiet. Hands meet cutlery poised and each bite is a perfect bite, chewed with regular, well-timed movements that involve all his taste-buds, as well as his extensive knowledge on the art and craft of haute cuisine and his vivid memories of Michelin starred experiences. When he’s not negotiating multi-million dollar contracts long into the nights and weekends, he enjoys cooking elaborate French dishes, following Julia Child’s extensive instructions to the letter.
Sunday mornings are for self-indulging. A good day starts with sleeping in, curtains drawn and the two young children, five and almost two, amused away from the master bedroom by whatever means necessary. It’s a complicated endeavour in the tiny, two bedroom apartment, but he is the one who decided they should make it work somehow, after the second kid arrived, while channeling all the money he is making and his negotiation skills into the new family home. Everything in the plans for their new two-story house gravitates around the island kitchen, his dream, his haven and the only part of the project he concerns himself with. Bathrooms and light fixtures and window blinds and tiles and living room decor are his wife’s responsibility. As is his breakfast, lush with berries and biscuits in creamy yoghurt and a strong coffee to go with that, followed by a long bubble bath with the kids on the correct side of the bathroom door.
Breaks from binge watching Poirot and playing online strategy games with his buddies he spends teaching his daughter the tough ways of the world and his son how to say dada. Their mother is called on for micromanagement and emergency rescue in situations that threaten to chip at his quiet me-time, a concept he values above all else. It’s the least he deserves, with all the pressure.
I have a pocketful of dreams. Heavy, they forgot how to breathe. I drag my feet through the afternoon light, dancing over the surface. Shadows reach out from the abyss, and ghosts are all shadow. I don’t look back, the shore I can’t call home anymore. I stumble. It’s hope that tugs at my tired feet, tiny and fleeting. The river runs slow and cold and blue. So dark, almost black. Quiet and gentle and infinite. Not enough to drown the tears. I let go of my breath one last time. Between myself and I, only the deep waters.
I remember him walking in, as if it were yesterday. Dragging his nonchalant flip flops on the polished floors, leaving a trail of sunny sand between the door and the middle of the room, he dropped his dirty backpack on a light beige armchair, virgin of any touch. He looked more at home than I was, which made me feel uncomfortable, if not slightly annoyed. His face beamed with a fresh tan, frustrating me into making a mental note of a vital vacation, as soon as my new business would allow. For now, there I was, stuck to tending to loud talking customers that claimed all the space, all the air, all the attention.
‘Any way I can get a ristretto in this joint?’, he smirked from across the room, to a flabbergasted waiter caught with a menu in mid air. ‘Do you even know what that is?’
‘We do. And welcome’, I intervened, trying to clear the air of impossible expectations and the tinge of irritation. The customer is always right, I kept saying to myself, while motioning him to take a seat and hoping to God of spotless cafes he will ask for the coffee to go. He held out the hand for the menu, fingers exasperated about the fraction of the second wait and let his entire tall, muscular body relax on another light beige armchair. Two victims and counting.
I turned around, my smile changing into a minuscule frown, urging the bartender to get on with the ristretto. By definition, it was supposed to be a short stay. Long enough, though, to have me question my priorities: spotless armchairs or paying customers?
He downed the coffee in one, not before letting it flood all his taste buds, eyes half closed, like trying to figure out some secret. I could understand the passion for good coffee, I had taken a barista course before venturing into the unknown as an entrepreneur, but come on, it’s just a coffee, let’s not get carried away, my mind was babbling, as I was doing my best not to roll my eyes at the connoisseur in him.
‘It’s not the worst I had’, he conceded, looking past me, towards the coffee machine. ‘I’ll try to make one myself, I’m sure you won’t mind.’
‘Sure, go ahead’, I caught myself saying out loud. What the fuck?
He went behind the bar, walking with the confidence of someone who doesn’t hear the word no too often. Or doesn’t even acknowledge its existence, as much as mine and the staff’s did not stand in his way. He washed his hands for the full duration of a tiny panic attack, who is this presumptuous idiot and how do I get him out of here? The waiter and the bartender were waiting for me to put an end to the charade, but I was frozen, eyes peeled to his tender movements around the shiny new apparatus. He cleaned the portafilter with precise movements and rested it below the grinder, eager for the wisp of flavors the grinding let out in the air. He pressed the coffee, cleaning the sides with a caress, while the hot water was streaming from the grouphead, priming it. He put the portafilter in position with one hand, while the other was already looking for the perfect size cup on the warming rack and scoffed when he saw none met his requirement. ‘A cappuccino cup will have to do, I guess’, his disappointment visible at the interruption in the ritual. He pressed the button, but kept the hand on the machine, feeling for the life in its veins.
When the noise of the equipment subsided and the last drop of coffee met the others at the bottom of the large cup, he turned around, holding out the ristretto for me. ‘The coffee knows when she’s loved’, he announced, ‘pretty much like people’, melancholy seeping in his voice to replace the arrogance. The third, I caught a glimpse of the words betraying me.
‘I’ll join you for a coffee, if I can get a decent cup around here’, he added, turning back to the machine and to himself.
She woke up one day and everything was the same. White, crumpled sheets enshrouded her medium build, now fetus shaped figure, hazelnut curls in disarray on the soft pillow. Her honey-like eyes of summer, reluctant to the intrusive light of a new day, trembled hidden in early tears. Life was waking up outside the window, and, with it, the realization that she existed still, blood in her veins, air in her lungs, wish unfulfilled. Under her translucent skin, map of chance and choice, scattered with moles and freckles and ink and scars, all questions, big and small, came barging in.
What time is it and what time is there where you are? What's the point? How much coffee is too much coffee? Why am I here? White sneakers weather today? How can I make the world stop spinning? She didn't care much about the small questions. Around the bigger ones, she tiptoed. It has been years confronting them with her weapons, their weapons, pill shaped weapons, and they didn't seem to dwindle.
Passing seconds weighed her body into reality, like grains of sand trickling in an hourglass. She could feel her aching bones hugged by soft flesh, the cold toes, her breasts sticking out of the tank top, sign of a restless night. Arms cradling her knees, hands clutching in prayer, she let out a long sigh. The body remembers and this gesture, useless as it might have been, transported her back to a simpler time. She used to pray as a child, in silly rhymes at first, then memorizing long prayers, recited with determination into the abyss. In golden words of gore, they promised salvation and mercy and grace. But life had other plans for her and praying stopped around the time he touched her for the first time. Believing vanished and part of herself, too.
She felt for her sharp dry cuticles, where the body pushed all its overnight resources into some healing. She would gnaw and pull at them until blood came dripping out, red and stinging and undignified. Then, over the day, she would tend to the fresh wounds, hydrate and massage, just to meet them again the next morning. Manicure was a drag, somewhat ashamed by this unappealing way of making her outside look bloody and sore, to match her insides. She could not let things be, cuticles too, without poking at them and pushing and pulling, even if her mind told her to stop. It hurt, but the mechanics of it turned pain into meditation. This can't be what they meant by being in the moment, she thought to herself at times, part glib, part sober. When sports and therapy failed, as they sometimes did, this was as close as she could get to stopping the rampage of her thoughts and coming back into her body, breath in, breath out.
It was a hot summer day outside, but the trees and the little garden kept the first story of the house quiet and cool. The blinds were almost completely shut and the light managed to filter only timidly through, in trembling undecided wisps. The house smelled like old people and mothballs and regret. She didn't quite know what regret meant, seeing that she was barely four, but it must've been bad, like secrets, the stories told by adults, sometimes in hushed voices, sometimes in high-strung desperation, after the kids were sent to bed. You will regret this, she yelled at him one night, and it sounded way more serious than no dessert or go to your room.
She knew running around, poking her nose though grown up business was not a good idea, when instead she should have been napping quietly, like a good girl, behind her snoring grandma. But the dark silence was calling her to go looking through old closets and drawers, creaking much like the bones of her grandparents and shining with the thin layer of wood polish Saturday general cleaning left behind. Most closets were locked tight, drawers stuck or uncooperative, but there was one, slightly open, giving a sweet scent of adventure and discovery. At just the right height, under the black and white TV they rarely used and, even then, only for news broadcasts, it was slightly ajar, unprotected and beckoning her.
She walked slowly, one tiny step in front of another, through the door that separated her grandmother's room, the room of the detested naps, from the living room, where all the secrets laid waiting. The weird concoction her grandmother prepared every morning, crawling with swimming insects and disappearing leaves, seemed to be watching her from the nightstand, but she held her own and pushed through. The floors creaked gently under her soft gait and she knew where the treacherously loud planks were, grandpa never missed those. She approached the drawer with wide eyes and deep breaths, like an old stuffed toy she had been missing or the most special birthday cake in the whole wide world. She grabbed it with both her tiny hands, in a sort of awkward hug and pulled gently. The squeak startled her, piercing the accomplice silence. Her heart started pounding, covering the ticks and tocks of the cuckoo clock between the street side windows. She held her breath, calming her heart and peered in.
The drawer was a treasure chest, full of knick-knacks, old and dusty and looking like they were hiding something only for her to see. Out of place and out of time, a tiny padlock with no key, a small, green photo album with people she could not recognize and her father, buttons lost and lonely and in a mismatch of shapes and colors. She touched them gently, with the tips of her fingers and her eyes half closed, listening intently to the sounds of the newly discovered fortune.
She pulled the drawer all the way out and gently laid it on the floor, at her feet. Looking from above at the disorder of bits and bobs, she tried to imagine what each was for, who touched it last, what magical world it would open. If they could help her turn into a princess or maybe a butterfly, if one of the rusty keys opened a chest full of lollipops and if that one lost lollipop smiling back at her was strawberry or raspberries. She wished it was strawberry, but she wasn't going to refuse it either way.
She sat on the floor, gently sucking at the pink lollipop, curbing her first instinct to go and ask her grandmother about the undecided flavor. Some safety pins came out of the drawer, lined carefully by size. Then a pen, ink smudged all over and some on her fingers too. An old perfume bottle, smelling just like her mother when she was happy, a smell she barely remembered. A notebook, pages yellowed and ruffled and marks on pages here and there. An A she recognized, also and N and some of the numbers too. She put it aside, hoping for a story reading before bed, but not before trying the pen, without much success. Buttons made up flowers and the needles stems. An old comb she used for the grass, weirdly gray, but her imagination filled the scenery with color.
And then there was the yellow bottle, tiny letters inscribed on the label, with a couple of rattling bonbons inside. She squinted through, trying to make out the colors and imagine flavors, while she jingled the bottle gently, to keep the secret to herself, but make it sing. The cap was stuck, like all the other secret hiding places in the old house. But her latest victory, laying happily at her feet made her bold and daring and she started using her imagination and all her newly found resources against the nagging lid. A screwdriver and the large pair of rusty scissors, the all too soft and useless photo album and the roll of sticky tape and a combination of all of these, with a key thrown in here and there for good measure, although no key hole was visible anywhere. The whole content of the drawer passed through the tiny hands in the desperate attempt to a second round of forbidden sweets. At last, the idea came and a tiny foot, slipped into a grown man shoe, stepped repeatedly on the yellow bottle, which cracked, revealing a curious assortment of bright red and dull yellow shapes, some bigger and round, some like stars that stopped growing. She carefully assessed them, smelling them and wishing they were strawberry flavored, she wasn't ready for another disappointment. Then she carefully took one of each and, testing first the shiny blanked with the tip of her tongue, she decided she might as well give them a try.
The four grownups found her in the early afternoon, breathlessly napping, her head resting on the empty drawer, flowers and magic worlds carefully creating around her with the treasure she bravely discovered.
