We used to be at home in the woods, we would pick windflowers on Friday evenings in the weeks after Easter, as church bells rang down the sun. Two by two with braided blonde hair in the early gloaming or with open collars we’d walk and listen to each other’s voices.
We were too rich, too lavish, forgot that the bonfire would soon burn down and catch a corner of our mantle, that we’d survive no more than grass or a spider’s web. Lost, we stumbled around like young priests, grasping for a ceremony, rambling a part of a hymn that’s supposed to belong, the light of the chestnuts burned down, the autumnal organ, the bread and wine of the fields passed around.
Now August blazes. It is late. Silently, phosphorescence and summer lightning envelop our boats, filled with fish in sinewy nets. The sea is quiet and black, and we don’t talk. And then we return to our houses, and in the cocoons of our living rooms the clocks say their dry “die, die, die”, and the breathing of the child answers a faint “oh no, oh no”. It is too hot, even our fears are sweating.
Every day we say our goodbyes. Let us not fight today, my love, about little incalculabilities. Come, we’ll go and see for one last time these seagulls flying in this sunlight and this breeze. Meet me then in May, when the butterflies fly gentle-sightedly with chaste, dusted wings.
21 notes