I was deeply asleep
In my father’s egg
My sharp knife on my chest
My fingers on the shiny blade
My good teeth followed my legs when
I was finally released in this world
The unborn died to let me breathe
And this is how
I survived the big storm
With white blood on my hands.
literature
Holding Hands
Come with me I know precisely
Which direction to go I said laughing
Face to face with the unspoken word.
Never afraid to fight you,
Never stopped building the new language
Only for us.
I put on my best dress
I killed everyone around
Just for a moment of solitude with you.
Come, I said, but do not look at me,
Like I at you.
The new vocabulary can now describe with easiness
The true detail of this abandoned land
On which we slowly walk through the mud
Holding hands.
And for a while there was an echo.
The word, however, did not reply
The word kept still
And winked at me before
It jumped off the bridge.
For Thou Art With Me
I was just talking to you when
The sudden breath I heard from the other side
Made me think
I too had
The same great fear of living forever
But said nothing.
Perhaps nothing was meant to settle
In front on this wall
And no! the metaphor you look at now
In this precise moment is nothing
But a distraction in my need for time.
Born to sit very still and observe
The details of your small victories
I am therefore only a brief graceful trap
Which you should never directly face.
I exist
On both sides of the fence
Exactly because you quietly follow my voice
In this imperfect landscape
A drop of ink, revealed by the greatness of your half empty glass.
Tempus
The other day I ordered a new pen
I went out to buy a new skin
With the sole purpose of writing your name on it.
The pen arrived with a great noise
My stretched back was ready to carry
The weight of the words but
Could not remember anymore
What to call you.
Ink drawing: Manuell Manastireanu
On the Way to Antarctica
I do not know why the invisible angel came to me.
I did not change the colour of my hair
Nor my skin, the very flesh, the way I walked
I did not even speak to anyone
On my way to Antarctica.
But still, to my surprise, the angel stopped
And took a bite of me
Like he would bite a silent piece of fruit.
Since then, I keep looking at my imperfect face
And touch the scar.
I cannot breathe.
No blood, nothing but unblemished words
Fill my new white prison.
Painting: Manuell Manastireanu, ‘To Be’, acrylics on cardboard
The Words
You say it is snowing and though
It is bright summer
The flakes melt on my skin;
The inky marks show where
The poem entered my body.
You also say that
Black looks like me when I stand up
So all of you, guided by my bright eyes,
Find the way out to light.
I do believe everything
I do see everything
As it really is
But prefer to keep out in the open
Amongst all the other invisible colours.
I am the only earthly possession
You wish you had
But always afraid to shelter for too long.
Persistent Ink (III)
I suddenly stopped and kneeled in the meadow
To look for grasshoppers;
The earth was breathing beneath us
The burning sun tall, so very tall.
You suddenly sat down and placed the violin between us.
Your left hand took the red shining cloth
And wiped the dirt off the wooden strings.
Then I thought to say
Let’s not hurry back home, not today
We have plenty of time yet
Nobody will look for us for a while.
How many poems, you whispered, left unwritten
If I was to lock you in my heart
A black butterfly crushed between
The covers of a sacred book.
Beauty kills like the war does
And still you unravel
The invisible thread which
Keeps both of us alive in the world.
As I stood up to leave
The smoke that kept my bones together for so long
Covered the sky.
My black ashes, your farewell gift.
Photo: Rob Webb
Early Memory
Just before midnight, in the unpreventable moment
When my mother woke up to give birth to me
I jumped out and
Spilt all her blood on the floor.
That was my first angry poem
Which I screamed at the top of my voice
In the pale room.
I had good lungs. The doctor’s verdict.
But the still asleep city shhhed me and
Asked to turn the noise down.
Mother went back to bed.
The following day I learnt to
Write on white walls with red letters.
Photo: Georgiana Calinescu-Barber
Random Act of Kindness
You weep tonight like the hunter weeps
Alone in the forest with his own rifle and
Listen to my whispered, faraway story.
You refuse to sleep.
While we share the same meal,
The shooting goes on in the city,
A revolution happens without us.
But too much heavy rain makes the music impossible,
Therefore we keep by the fire.
The flames project your shadow on the opposite wall.
From where I sit you look like a black continent
With borders engraved on the silent bricks.
We will be at sea in the morning
Embarked on the wooden boat.
None of us cruised before
You suggest we could learn to sail by dawn
Before we depart.
So I draw the armchair closer.
The heat is burning my feathery back
But in the absence of pain
I agree with everything you say.
In a random act of kindness
I do not stop but continue to write my final dispositions
With furious fits of laughter.
The ink dries out on the stone which I place in your hand.
The token we need for the big passage.
Drawing: Manuell Manastireanu
Persistent Ink (II)
I live in a round house across the road
And every day I wave the invisible white flag
Just to distract you from writing so many letters.
Other times, all I do is stare at your reflected image
Bent over the desk,
Thinking whether your back is broken
Having to bear so many words.
You do not lift your eyes up
Never see anything but yourself.
The only time you stand up and walk to the door
Is to refill the glass with sand.
No news from the outside world.
You do not know we are at peace.
Maria Stadnicka 