A day A day
Gravel sings beneath my heels and shakes of the dreams that are still lingering, creatures of the night against the blue April sky. I walk up to my car which is parked under the birch trees. A girl assembles out of thin mist hovering the surrounding fields. Her lips enclose the corner of my mouth. As I turn to meet her eyes there is just emptiness. Only the moist texture of her fleeting lips prove that she was there, at some point. My dog barks. I open the door and he slips onto the passenger seat. We drive over the tarmac scars satirizing the green fields where hollow reeds play brittle in the wind and a pheasant fades red through the long grass. Jefs nose is reflecting the sunlight, it is as if he’s trying to balance a night sky full of stars. I drive slowly, windows open. Morning murmur chases away the mechanical coughs of my old Renault that has become a graveyard of twigs and leaves. Pieces of garden that got stuck in my clothes and hair while cutting and slashing through the thing I hold most dear, nature. I loath being a gardener.
The cobblestone bridge rattles our bones but I love it being the only way onto our isle. I park my car near the abbey where basswood trees are whispering of gentler times, times wherein people joined in sacred bands, wherein fear was embraced in a bigger body and joy was celebrated in a community of hearts, beating the same pulse but sining different stories. Jef jumps over to the driver seat as I saunter to the bakery. I don’t have to look over my shoulder to know his black eyes are following me and are already picturing the slice of plum bread I usually bring him. The bakery is crowded, always is, always has been. It’s a place where time seems futile. Absent, the decay of bread and men. Offering my sincere apologies to everyone I inevitable bump into I reach the blue rack carrying the weight of the Sunday news. I neglect my duty as member of society and leave the paper reading to the more civilized men who are with their nose deep into the news, neglecting each other, getting astray between the memories of others caught in ink. The illusion of being united while actually wandering alone between the remembrance of trees in a death forest. ‘A plum bread and a dark Fjord bread, sliced if you will’, I stumble it over the glass counter with a young mens blush vibrating over my face. I have taught a classroom full of teenagers, annoyed by the soothing voices of Arvo Pärts Antiphonen, and remained full of leadership, my voice carried authority trough the room, but somehow, when I’m in a room full of strangers, I manage to sound like a little kid who has it’s first speaking in public experience. ‘Thanks again!’ I scream wildly insane into the sweet ether. I steer my car back over the sloshing shores of the Leie.
