i see your face has changed after all the dirty rivers
and wastelands
it has been a heavy winter the crops have drowned
ebbing your brows down and in
towards your eyes
which retreat in their dark vortex
your hands too look rather different
all tendons and bones surfacing
veins protruding like seaweed
as if to indicate a way out
an indefinite future
or an insurmountable present where
death is no longer an event
but an ingredient
what sweet bread you make in this prosperous house is dirty
what good soup you boil turns in your mouth to mud*
there has been no past
nonetheless
you know
when the sun hides behind the buildings
you know by the glimpses on the windows
there must have been something profuse and inarticulate
which on this occasion we will conventionally refer to as
love
by now
what lie you have said has come back to choke you
what lie you have been told you have been stripped of
i believe i am talking about sense
purpose or any other dream one embarks for
i see you trying to recollect the moment of deviation
an instant of collision
i see your body recoil upon a violence i fail to perceive
perhaps a succession of words or a ghost for
when they said time heals all wounds what they meant was that
time is a wound great enough to encompass
all pain and
all blood
i gather by the way your head tilts forward and your eyes lower to the ground
you are trying to find the pieces of that which has once been whole
i gather by the way you smile that
where there is ash there must have been a fire once
i think i hear you murmur something
though it may just be
your heart
trying to bruise the silence.
*Olga Broumas
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