Your voice was an iced fruit apple slice to us, Shared while seated outside every summer, Though you never travelled in any season. Your laugh was a comedy catchphrase.
You were the pink Marks & Spencer meringue nests, Crystal-cut glasses of cherryade, and amethyst birthstones on bracelets. You were the bag, laden with photographs, postcards, Prayers, and magazine tips for houses.
The school I confided in you about, And the certificate I earned from there— You were the imagining of it framed on hospital walls.
You were the marble-handled, soft-bristled hairbrush, The Revlon make-up, the hot drinks before bedtime, Silky blouses, blazers, and slippers.
You were the grandma we prayed for a miracle for, As we willed you to get well.
Now you are the neat, grassy path I know by heart And tread with utmost care; The earrings of your sister we must arrange to repair, The door ajar at a certain moment, The good luck wish, the tiniest horseshoe, And rosary beads we last left you with.

​March 5, 2025 06:18

Nothing. No one. Or other pieces of emptiness that wander through my atrophied memory. The big white birds talk among themselves incessantly, even in the middle of the night. The sea was yesterday a blue wall, which I would not have dared to cross for anything in the world. So beautiful. The elders once came from the other side of the horizon to here, and for them it was the end of the world. Pines tortured by the wind surround me, today, it’s blowing from the East, from Central Asia like the people here. An abandoned cathedral, Greek Orthodox and all white, was empty. The path climbed steeply to the top. We passed a cemetery without a cross. A man imitated a bird there, looking perfectly ridiculous. In my dream there was a painting painted thirty-five years ago broken by a stranger. I discovered a piece of it by chance at a friend's place who was indifferent to it. This strange character can't speak English, the others are bandits. In the gallery everyone thought I was rich, it makes him think about Under the Sun of Satan when he looks at them. At night I hear the heavy footsteps of the seagulls above my head, moving and screaming even in the middle of the night. They are insomniacs, winter is coming to an end, it's the season when they talk too much. Something or someone stole two eggs, as white as both my eyes, from a nest placed on a window ledge thirty meters above the ground. So she never came back. Human beings and animals are the same, it's sad or not. It’s the beginning of the fasting for some, the awakening for others, at six o'clock sharp. Life is paradoxical, as the angel Gabriel told me once. I have nothing to say against that, I don't know, nor will I ever know. I could have or should have jumped, no one would have known anything about it. She’s totally aware that suicide is the only way out for him if things keep on going like this. Others have always been afraid of him, rightly so, and vice versa. After madness, nothing will be the same again.
And yet, the blue sea was certainly not a wall for him, but an abyss, in the end.