Me and a giant zucchini, Sandvika 2023

In the body of a the crystal, I was curled like a child. I became aware of the colours around me breaking at the edges of my sight. I felt the the ravines of my cheeks of time lost in moments that I can no longer call mine. My lip is healed, I had bit through it earlier. There’s still a shooting pain in my left shoulder from where I stretched too far. I need the warmth to soothe it, to calm it. It was snowing then, I remember. This hail that hit my forehead like a thousand little pebbles. I don’t hear anymore, I don’t taste anymore. Glimpses of colour and shards of pain remain.

The moon is a cradle. She’s leaning incredibly low and looks like she might fall out of the sky – a thin crescent I could break with my fingers. The light below is white and the roads snake into the darkness. I’ve missed you, you know that. I hear my voice in my head, of course I do. I wish I could cradle you right now like the moon cradles her void. Back in the day I used to pick a bottle for us at the duty free, you know the portguese one, or maybe the chianti but we don’t really drink anymore, do we? One couldn’t hurt.

Remember the glassy water? Remember that summer we sat on the houseboat and through his worn down teeth he played those songs and we sat like kids at his feet filling in where we could with our voices and stamping feet. I remember that. We fell asleep with the light.

I know I didn’t leave in the best way. I know that it was messy. I know that the list of things I could have done and should have done snake around the house. You were upset and shouted. The dogs ran away, I wish I could have gone with them but I just stood there with my suitcases. You know I had to go but you wouldn’t let me. I didn’t want anymore, I couldn’t take anymore. I wanted to be where the dogs were and I also wanted to be far away in a home that was mine in a foreign land.

I look at the moon again, she’s blood red. It’s crazy, actually. One day this will become memories but right now in these last few moments I need to look at this moon. I can make out the tiniest craters and where the light fades into the black. The last time I saw a blood red moon was in Paris. We had a bottle of wine, you and I and we talked about back home. I haven’t thought about this memory in years but I was with you on the steps in front of Momatre and how the steps cascaded below us like a running waterfall. The moon was a lantern in the sky, also dripping red like the one I see right now. We had a white bottle of wine we bought at the hostel, from the upright fridge. You were a year older than me so I let you buy it. Do you remember that? We resumed our lives back at school and exchanged knowing looks once in while.

I understand this place better and better. Snow is banked up along the street and the sounds are muffled. Rest now weary traveller, or so they say. You come home to yourself sometimes. It was you that put the bookcase there, it was you that chose those chairs and put those prints up. A traveller without a home is a wanderer. You have to be tethered to go. You know the story of Theseus and the Minotaur? How he had to descend into the labirynth to kill the beast? It was dark and full of terrors but he was given a ball of thread by Ariadne and to help him find his way out.

You have to enter the darkness of your heart to kill the beast but you also have to find a way out. That thread that you’re given, take care of it, for it is you. That thread lies on all the steps you have taken and all the corners you have turned. That thread is a memory, it is a knowing. You have to get out and the only way to is to trace back the knowing. It is easier to sever the chord and to sit in the darkness and let it envelope you. I know how it can feel to give in. I know how it feels to be so cold you could close your eyes and be washed away. You realise that living and dying really isn’t all that far apart sometimes.

In Attack On Titan, Annie freezes herself in a crystal and stays there for quite a while. It’s a common enough thing, to not feel, to shut out and I think it’s a innate response. I’ve seen people do it before, shut down and cast their eyes down and drag themselves around, lower and lower only glancing up to glare. We’re just hurt little dogs sometimes. In Attack on Titan, Annie felt that she had no choice and no escape so that’s all she could have done. No one knew what she was feeling or thinking but Armin kept talking to her. They grew up together, Annie comatose and Armin fighting and staying alive for both of them.

I walked with you by the harbour. It was three in the morning but there was so much light. The wind wiped the tears sideways off your face. You didn’t say anything, too much had happened for that right now. I walked you home and you showed me the bed. I got a glass of water for you and made sure that you were safe. I don’t remember my walk home but I wandered for a bit longer than I needed to. We stopped talking soon after that.