Looking Forward

The end of the year and beginning of a new one are conventions. Collectively, we could have divided time and established special moments any other way. For some reason, it was a moment in the middle of winter that most of the world now celebrates as the start of something new. And, despite its arbitrariness, I’ve always felt and lived it as if it were special.

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Bequest

Thank you for all the gifts
The ones that I asked for, the ones I didn’t ask for
The ones I didn’t even know were there

That cup of cocoa
That night train across the mountains
That uncontrollable anger 

Those boxes under the Christmas tree
The dark butterflies of helplessness in my stomach
Those uplifting words just when I needed them

Those crushing words that still resonate in me
You were doing your best, I know

I received them all
Bound as we were by this
Unbroken chain of transmission
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Tender is the night

I suddenly woke up as if an alarm was going off somewhere. A high-pitched noise drilling holes into the fabric of reality. But there is nothing. The silence is complete, definitive, almost painful.

I dreamt of you. Again. You were looking at me with that look of calm detachment. Not even disappointment. Not even resentment. Just coldness, as if you were looking through me, beyond me, to whatever else was there once I was out of the picture.

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Rainy night

It rains over the city like a curtain falling after a big show.

Contours are blurred out. Light trails lit up the night. Colors dissolve into one another. Hurried silhouettes pass by.

Summer is gone. The irreversibility of this simple fact is now made concrete, almost painfully tangible. There’s no going back to that part of life, with all its good and bad.

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All paths lead back to where I stand

All this unchecked wild growth. This gracious abandonment. These plant seeds flying around, offering themselves to anybody, offering themselves to nobody. This whirlwind of life coming together in this very moment, unplanned yet fully in sync. Not asking for a witness, not needing to be acknowledged, just being there.

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The past present

I woke up early, too early, like so many times before. There’s a beautiful sunrise out there, for anybody who’d care to witness it. Not me. I am struggling to wake up after I struggled to go back to sleep. Not feeling quite ready to start the day, yet far away from that coziness of being under the blanket and just turning over for another hour of sleep.

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Night flight

This Belgian village counts just a handful of houses, meandering across the hills. In front of the church, there’s a hand-written sign: “big fire on Saturday”. That’s about all the detail. Here, everybody knows everybody. And everybody knows where everything happens.

It’s the communal bonfire at the end of the carnival. The burning of winter in effigy.

As it gets darker, people start gathering on a hill outside the village. Some of them costumed. Kids are running around, high with excitation and fatigue. It’s freezing.

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