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Along the highway of those who are travelling light
He inhales you like the smell of spring
Doesn’t realise you are more than just a flower
Your questions smell like polish vodka
Smelling sweet and tasting strong
The truth you tell has the same smell
He says you are too heavy for a man travelling light
Sneezes you out on the side of the road
You smile to yourself because you know
No matter how far he drives from here
He will forever smell of polish vodka.

You ask me why I smile even as you try to break me
Did no one ever tell you that serenades can be bitter?
Or that photographs are not mysterious, they can be taken by the eyes
When they tell the mind to freeze a moment, freeze it for all time
So serenade me once again, with words that bruise an ego
Throw careless words around, like the stone of a hailstorm,
That cracks glass in an instant disappears within seconds
If I were made of  glass, the jungle would have spit me out.
Your tone drowns out the rain, as you address the non-essentials
I trace the contours of your face, take a mental photograph
I want to remember you like this, lest I ever forget
When they ask me what life was like in the jungle
I want to tell the truth
Let me look at you again, I want to remember
Lest nostalgia ever hits me
Lest it distorts my memories, mistaking indifference for love
Or condescension for construction,
Mistaking me for you in a bitter serenade.

You were headed towards the ocean when the clock struck noon
Eyes full of doubt, like someone told you something new
Did you need proof that the earth’s a sphere?
You said you’d see if you could go in and swim
Legs trembling from something I don’t think was fear
Were you trying to find the parts of her belly that ache,
When you feel it churn and it makes you tremble?

Your hands are rough, your eyes dried up
Years of feeling the surface and squinting into the core
Searching for the parts of her that needed saving
Do you have to be free to save the chained?
There are many ways she could have swallowed you whole
How do you know you were ever free?

Did I ever tell you I knew her once, know her still
A lifetime’s too short to find all her aching parts
To soothe them all, to undo the hurt
You were headed towards the ocean when the clock struck noon
If you find the ache within her belly
I hope it lights a fire in yours
To take you through the afternoon years of your life.

What do you tell yourself when you lay your head down
As the world disappears and your conscience asks you questions
Like is it worth it to colonize the sun?
Or hold all the clouds in your single fist
As you try chewing the rain on your way down?
Why do you fear those who spread out their minds
To capture the world the best way they know how
Before the fate of autumn leaves embraces them
Like it does to all of us.?
I think we are weary of moving out of the circle
As you push us down, under, left and right
As if the sun is in love with you alone
I am not moving, it’s your turn to move out
It’s my sun too…
It’s my sun too.

Walk through a crowded street
Sit inside a crowded bar
Then watch her walk towards you
The scarlet of all your fears
Watch the world disappear
Leaving you on a purple couch
A specs wearing stranger in front of you
“Tell me how it all began?”
And you realise it’s the very first time
You get to tell this story in one series
And find yourself within it

Watch them sitting side by side
Looking like a place you left long ago
When you finally learned
Anger has a family too
A cousin called resentment
A niece called apathy
Who fill the silence between two lovers
Before they go their separate ways

© Zdena Middernacht 2019

You say you want to go away from here?
Go!
Travel the world in search of a little comfort.
Take the flight and taste all its delicacies.
But remember this!
One day you will look down from the flight, at a valley that looks familiar.
Home, with its cheap paint and run down walls will call your name from the depths of your soul and you will know you have never loved anything quite like that.
Like your first love, the scent of the dry red earth just after the rains will call you, and you will answer.
You say you want to go away from here?
Go!

And there you were in front of me
Talking like Paris, smelling of Rome
Finishing my sentences under your breath
As if you’d been there in my reflections of home
In fantasies of kisses that pierced through bone
The kind that dull the noise on a Tuesday afternoon

You reached out your hand, said Hello
Since when did Hello sound like rushing waters?
In the middle of a city, at the top floor of an old building
I dove, I dove so long before…
Before I learned how to swim, before I thought I would need to

To live was to dive, eyes closed and drown
Deep in the waters that the soul called its home
To sink and find there was more to you
Than the one who spoke like Paris and smelled of Rome
You were the deep I’d been digging to find.