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There isn’t one way to say goodbye
haibun
He said arrivederci because it was one word in not-his-mother-tongue he remembered. And like that, he was gone in the midst of the foliage, where I always believed the neighbour’s fence was but it couldn’t have been as otherwise, how could he have disappeared?
Porca miseria, sono persa senza di lui.
Since then un topo piccolino has appeared several times knocking impatiently on the patio door: Fammi entrare!
No, mate, it’s not happening, I’m not going to have mice dancing around my living room.
He used to dance the waltz though. Ha ballato e cantato come un strigo alla pioggia viola. It’s raining now, too. But the rain is grey and striking hard and I don’t know how to inject colour into the outside world without him.
I’m afraid to peel off the layers of ivy to check what’s there, behind the foliage. I’m afraid I’ll make the neighbour disappear because if there is something else than the fence, if there is a whole land in which one can live and travel, and love, and die, then the neighbour’s house is not there either and then where is the neighbour himself?
And I like my neighbour. Especially since he told me about murderous brambles that ambush hapless sheep and entangle them in the web of thorns until they lose their…
