single
room
I saw only a pile of books, a watering can and two white geraniums, writing
brushes and paint brushes, coloured pencils, bottles of nail polish, curled
apple peels and the white of the walls; no picture, no painting, he took
ladybugs out of a suitcase and pinned them in her white bridal veil in which
her naked body was wrapped; the wedding bed was missing, maybe it was too early
to sleep, he was watching her draw a bird without wings, only flying high in a
fuchsia-coloured sky, she with the brush in the air bemused. Then she leaned
over him, down on the immaculate wall grew blank verse following a writing
brush that devoured the lime from the walls, climbing to the ceiling her
drawings with birds and gazelles or just multi-coloured stars in clusters; when
they stopped writing verses and drawing, they laid back with a book in
their hands, in the room there was a smell of Jonathan apples coming from a box
between the books, time did not measure with a pendulum, but climbed the white
walls in verses and colour, he fell asleep with his hands on the bird painted by
her with its beak bent to suck dew, she kissed his unspoken poems only with the
eyes of a metallic green or blue, no shell could have reflected so many pearly
glitters as her eyes, a wild voluptuousness, lifted her higher and higher on
the walls now half-covered with the desires that became one; when the sour
juice of the Jonathan apples ran around the corner of their mouths, they let
the brushes rest and sank into the books; the painted walls had cracks of
dazzling light emanating from the verses and the multi-coloured stars filling the
ceiling with wingless birds, only high flight and the ladybugs in her veil
stretched the elytra in unison, the calligraphy dripping on the veil, it
floated in the light and like champagne spilled over the rim of the glass, the
walls collapsed into them and were suddenly free.
the
branch
a
green branch sprouted from my chest, rose to the sky in abundance of small
branches, children and adults looked at me in amazement, the light slipped
through the leaves and buds, in spring I was dazed by the hum of bees, in
autumn there were reddish berries, round as rosehips. which were picked up by
passers-by, hurried to fulfill their good wishes with them, over the summer
birds came to sunbathe, flutter their wings, trills, restlessness saw my eyes
and delighted my hearing, until exhaustion and sap rose from its veins to the
branches so that the winter did not have the power to defeat the green, I did
not know where the frosted sparrows came from to warm up a bit, I did not have
money for grains and I recited verses from memory, sometimes I drew a sun on
each branch one morning I woke up with a handful of stars in the higher
branches, I walked through the cities and people always greeted me with a real
smile, I had started looking for its roots for some time, I fell asleep with my
eyes on the handful of stars in the sky and when I kneaded the homemade bread I
thought about it, I hadn't found the roots anywhere on earth, only if I touched
that spot on my chest I knew it must have come from longing or maybe from a
dream.
Elena Malec is a philologist by trade, poet and artist by choice. She has published literary criticism, prose, poetry, essays, haiku, books of gourmet cooking, ikebana, morimono, and art. She lives with her husband in Southern California where she dedicates to painting, writing, making rag dolls, ikebana and haiku. Her books can be found on Amazon. Her haiku and senryu is published in many online journals.
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