Flower Power

A sleeping beauty woke up and looked at me, just, surrounded by highlights and so many chances of postcard pictures I see her. It's not a she, I don't know why I write that, it's a truck, maybe a former van, now a wreck some would say. Someone built her, someone left her. Then the flowers, the climbers, the sun and the soil. She is part of all that now. Her fainted yellow fits the purple and green, I'm not sure I've ever noticed the colour of a truck. There are levels of being abandoned. My father on the bench with the jingling plastic bag next to him would never have seen himself as anything but in blossom. One day he left the bench, he moved on to a pub, later on he spend his days with Miles Davis, Davis didn't know, my father never needed him to know.

Bad Beat

A little while ago he exploded. 
He yelled and shouted and flung the banana he was eating. It slipped down the fridge door, the rest of it here and there on the floor. Once again he grabbed a couple of bags, firmly, and stomped out. Then the silence. Miles got up. He appeared in the doorway, very awake:
- Is he gone?
I nodded. I was calm, I carried out the rituals of a Friday morning, one by one. We talked about the Spanish teacher, the dog, his lunchbox, it's not watertight, yesterday he had water in his satchel, so ice cubes in a plastic bag to keep his lunch cool is not a good idea. I'll have to buy him a freezer pack. That I promised him. We also laughed a little, of it all, washed the fridge door and wiped off the banana from the floor. Then I took him to the school bus. Now I've made myself a cup of coffee. I sit by the window and try to make my body understand, that no one is going to die of it.

No calls, no killings

The day has moved on, for a couple of hours I'm on the forgotten side of the planet, I'm the lucky one, this is the moment soldiers in the trenches longed for, no calls, no killings, exhausted and dirty and embracing this little land of freedom between midnight and dawn.

Infatuation

Maybe you do have to leave yourself and get lost to carry out an infatuation. So that everytime you look for yourself you find what the other sees. And somehow it all seems perfectly natural, which it may be. Whatever is true I've never seen so many stars as tonight.

Beginnings

We fell in love.
I was in love with another and had just accepted the fact that it was not going to be.
This is what I would like to continue and turn into a novel tonight. Nothing wrong with that, only the night doesn't last.

One day when we sit in that car

I'm in a traffic jam, I don't know where, it could be Germany, it could be France, we are all locked away in our cars. Some are payed for, some are not, some are old, some are new, this morning nobody moves. We thought we were on our way, well, we are not. Suppose we all take a peep at each other to see if somebody really do eat the bogey. I see a couple, man and woman, so used to each other, to the traffic jam, to the wednesdays, the pyjamas, the children, the toothpicks, the football match on television, the nicotine chewing gum, the little scar by his lower lip, her once so green eyes. He changes radio channel, she looks out of the window. If it wasn't for the traffic jam they would be at work by now. Later they will go to the supermarket, pick up the children, prepare the dinner, tidy up, do the laundry, answer the phone, worry about a bill, at the end of the day a goodnight kiss on a forehead. This is their undisturbed moment together. I make a wish. She turns her head and sees the hand fumbling with the radio, his fingers, his wrist, and finally his lips as full and beautiful as yours, she gets a little shy, it's such a sudden desire.

The not knowing

I don't know the names of the trees here. I can watch them and be delighted, without knowing. It's a relieft. I get this fatigue of words. I can't see how we should be doing without. I can't see how we can understand anything with them. It's so hard for the birch to be anything but birch once it is named. The thousandfold of heartshapened leaves are not little bells in the breeze anymore. If they ever were. Or golden stars winking at you in October. Or glinting knives in the night. They become leaves of a birch, just another establishment, though a beautiful one.
I haven't seen any birches in Antigua. I don't know what I see. And what I see does not know my name yet.

Conception

It changes everything, I said. You said, Everything. We didn't know the meaning of everything. We shared our images, that's all. Now we break them, one by one, side by side, sometimes shattered, it takes a man, it takes a woman to discover the extend of a simple, everyday word as everything.

Hills of Antigua

Wrapped in green hills, at the end of my sight the blue of the bay, but I'm in the green, the colour of a mother's arms, the movements of the car rock me from side to side, I close my eyes, I can open them as well, I know I'm not asleep, I'm right next to you, absolutely certain that I'm sheltered.

Next morning

Next morning most of yesterday's sun and dust are gone. This day has its own sky, a breeze, a sudden glance. I turn the pages in my Moleskine and wonder where yesterday is gone now. I was almost certain it left me a letter somewhere.