Sometimes I walk miles and miles across the field
Just to check if
You are still breathing
I gently touch your back and think
Look, it’s winter!
We have the town all to ourselves
Your hair grows and grows over the frozen river
As you sleep
My hands collect golden tears
To bake the silent fresh bread
Of my last supper.
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
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
Sometimes I think I’m made of words
And not of flesh
A poet eating ice cream
On a tree leaf
But other times
My very flesh will make the words
Which float like water grains
On wooden tables.
I sigh when I sleep
And turn my back to the sea.
My body gets smaller and smaller
Ready to enter the wooden box.
The history grows between us
Like a living room plant
In a small, windowless house
But at least you live by the fire
While I am the black ink of this poem
Staring at you during the night.
My bright eyes reflect
The shadow of your absence,
Waiting for a new, final peace.
Photo: Georgiana Calinescu-Barber
I saw her in the mirror today
And she saw me.
We watched each other for a while.
The black reached forward.
The blue moved backwards.
I pushed my hands against the glass
She did the same.
I leaned towards left
She towards right.
I stopped. She stopped too.
Then laughed.
I had no teeth.
She had some.
I had rain water in my hair
She had no hair at all.
None at all, had she, NO…THING.
There’s been no rain in her world for a while now.
Just a persistent thirst.
She carefully opened her palm to
Catch the falling drops and look at them
But I rushed out
Gently pushing the image away.
My wet hands, her cracked lips.
The soft memory of growing old
Alone.
Print: Lorraine Robbins
I do not talk
I am just saying words
Whilst keeping my eyes on the passage in front of us
So you can hear and stop.
Let me hold the pistol this time, I laugh,
You, confess how beautiful the town is in the dark,
Be still and silent and dance around me.
Although I am not born yet
I can listen to your breath underground
Where the soil, moving up and down with a big sigh,
Brings you up in the world.
I am closer and closer,
My neck, stretched, to have a proper look at you
Asleep on the grass.
‘We are two quiet songs’ I think,
One, vertical, blue,
The other, small white seed.
And just as my stare wakes you up I know I will
Remember this precise moment of my existence and
When, at last, I will hand over the keys,
My head will turn to catch the final glimpse of your flesh.
But just for now, this night opened two separate roads ahead.
The one for you, learning to walk,
Another for me, barely moving.
Drawing: Maria Butunoi
Maria Stadnicka 