I can’t continue any more. I can only start over. Because continuing means turning back, going close, taking a good look at the endings, digging into what lead to those. And then, having the knowledge, planning how to adjust, weave, sew, glue, knead, nail the beginnings to the endings… Violent words, all of them. And they presuppose the intent to go back. The intent to take a look inside. There’s no place for me in what has passed. I learned from it whatever I could learn.
With a cotton bud, I cleaned the keyboard of my laptop today. Many years old dirt came out of the gaps. A golden hair, my dog’s, Tana’s. A snow white one – my friend’s dog’s, Alma’s (she hang out at my place quite a few times, too). Then a human hair, red-blonde and curly. Now this did hurt. Not yet in years, but I can already count it in months since I last spoke to her. I miss her. I don’t even understand what had happened. Breathing out. Long, deep. Then, a crumb. Probably nice, crispy Hungarian bread crust. A sticky brown drop. Of course it’s coffee, what else? Coffee in our tiny kitchen, with cigarettes and nice talks. Empty space. Missing. Nothingness.
And then I understood. I can’t continue. I can only start over.
I don’t even need a hiding place any more. I haven’t been afraid of anything for a long time. I closed just way too many doors behind me definitively to allow myself the luxury of being scared.
I mopped the floor of our kitchen and hoovered our living room. My hair is unbelievably red and my nails are unbelievably long. I love the sound of them pattering on the keyboard to the rhythm of Death Cab for Cutie. Instant coffee, sunbeam on fresh snow, a vase of white wild flowers.
Me.
