Come morning, a sliver
of cold slipped through
a crack in the window.
The slow creeping ghost,
memory, nostalgia, even
crimson shades of regret
sifted through the leaves
and tunneled under the doorway;
I awoke with a shatter
to a turgid languor.
I lay in the swollen air, trying
to hide from and ignore
the shadows of seasons past,
got up hoping coffee would help,
and I felt around my neck that ring
that holds my cross to its chain.
You weighed more heavily
than you did in September.
Those words
dripping with meaning,
yet starved of significance,
are a mirage to a foreign
ear. Honey-laden voices
sit behind glass too hard
to crack. It could be poetry,
it could be vulgarity, slander,
or plain chit-chat; it’s hard
to tell what’s behind that
thick concrete wall, studded
with coils of barbed wire
and screaming in silence.
Far off cornered around
this too-big world, I shake
and shiver under a pile
of blankets. Abstracted
and vaporous, my mother’s
hand rests on my forehead.
The kettle whistles, a hot bath
fills and steams, and my soft
warm bed is too far away
on this lonely distant night.
My stomach bites, my skin
tremors, and home is far
away, far too far away tonight.
Crammed with two dozen
people into a converted van,
we slowly bumped our way
towards remote alpine air.
The hills swelled around
our caravan, an island
of sound in a deserted silence;
we plod away, leaving behind
much more than the chattering
city, its lights, creaks, and fumes.
I was unwinding a tangled string,
a nested web that gradually dissolved
into rolling hills, clear air, and a simple
meal shared among our company
in the Omphalos of Tsakartsvelo.
Something new crept inside
of me as we clambered
back into our converted van.