Ships

How much further? he asked panting and looking at me with the doubt of a person who starts feeling tricked. I looked ahead, saw the giant tree and pointed at it. We'll turn around at the tree.

We were both so quiet as we approached it, the big tree who saw all my friends on my walks back from school. Last year I went back to see my friends and the big tree. The tree was gone, the ten year olds are gone, my friends were gone. His mother's gift seemed to be the only thing left of an entire city to travel quietly along with me.

When I go to sleep and delve into my past, the memories of that day, his yelling at me to keep the steer straight, his mother's gift, all seem like they deserve the double l in his spelling mistake. In the darkest hours I cling on to this extra l as the purest memory of my life.

I hope I will have the time to sift through Fernando Pessoa's and Forough Farrokhzad's work this year. I miss reading poetry just like I miss my younger soul. My ghostly younger soul is dying: it misses feeding on its ghostly mates.

I would like to be able to record smells. Some of them are so unique, so tied to an experience, so precise yet elusive when summoned back. I remember with nostalgia one early spring day when I passed through Braşov and the central plaza and a few narrow streets smelled like freshly taken from the oven home-made bread. What an awesome smell to record. It had snowed the night before and the town was clad in snow and this surprising smell of bread. I never associated the winter-spring transition with cleanliness, but there it was, the purest of all smells gliding on the whitest of all snows.

Her sweet Avon perfume rounded the smell of my skin to perfection, but she liked my Hypnotic Poison better, and mentioned every now and then she’ll try to get it cheaper through a scam. I guess we were ready to mistake perfumes for thoughts, and drown into armours of deception. Now it matters no more who had the purest of thoughts, the most impeccable tango steps. This winter solstice was the last to hear our thoughts twist each others’ hands, as they took over and whitened our ears to deafness.

It still bothers me that people who cannot understand each other the least as it turns out, can complement mind and spirit to build up and high the most amazing network of arches and bolts. The puzzled face I had every time she confessed intensely: got no clue, but it feels like...
I was thinking through the clearness of her mind while she was feeling through the murkiness of my heavy soul. Every time we joined, mind and spirit were laughing at each other’s perfection and cried for more.

Last December kept me wondering who are those whom I call my friends in the darkest of hours? Is it those who understand me, or those who complement me to perfection? When the day stands shortest, in the dimmest of lights, I feel that for the doom inside of me I need my friends to understand me without complementing the circle of my thoughts. This perfect circle that I am running away from comes around in completion of my disaster. As long as I am made of unfinished negation I feel safe, I feel black. With an eternity of hope ahead of me, I can give and be given forever.

The shortest day of the year was chosen by fate to show me that even the sharpest of us filter mind through soul when possessed. It stands bitter and straight to remind me of the readiness with which we shun off the infinity of shapes other people’s thoughts may take. The winter solstice is the birth of a friendship that could have been but died in the shortness of breath, in the dimness of lights, in an arrhythmic hybrid's tango breakdown. The winter solstice failed to phase in the restless hour of my thoughts with her tired soul.

His room smells like a garden of flowers
That bowed to the reaper and dried up well.
Aromatic chains of smoke cling on to rags
Friendships are sealed
With sweat from incandescent glues.

It is his fate to gather death, myth and ashes
His power to turn this room into a shrine

She’s glued to this man whose eyes
Mirror pain, the deepest pains of life.
To burn this pain he welcomes us
With fire and a childish laughter in his room

Your memory feels like polished silver,

You must have really shone

In the heat of my youth.

It was fun to have you near me,

Watch you code patience in circles of smoke.

You were so quiet, so listless.

I always had to listen for signs of your breath.

How did I lose you with no fear?

The only one who could blur

My time on the speeding merry go;

You picked my men and drove my moods,

Yeah, you were the queen.


On the dance floor and in mountains

I turned half your shoes to stories.

One of none who had me bound

By Carmina breaking amps:

When the older blood was boiling;

Tip-toe tricksy, den of refuge,

Witch who turned my tears to laughter,

Can you hear me? I say thanks.


Now you're far and time is speedy:

Watch it folding on my skin;

Waving girl you're sending ripples

In this weather’s spring.

Best of life, and best of metals,

Gliding by your soul was easy.

I still watch you pace with glory

Through my troubled teen

I let it be, lost the strength needed to fear
The time when I will see you again
A weakness that wakes me up everyday
Makes me surrender my fears
In tradeoff for one more breath at sunrise

May the water take it upon itself
My refusal to struggle
For I am too young to decide
Whether a sacrifice should be made
Or has been made already

For years I have repeated in vain
That time will decide instead of us
Yet time has come, and time has gone
Just sagging my arms with disdain

You keep saying you've changed a lot
Repeating it just enough to prove
That certain things will change,
While others won't: the Untouchables.

I can't bother time with formules de politesse
The almighty sorter of go! or stay!
Won't touch you, my first and last thought,
Not even time would dare look at you.
I screech: no love can filter you through