When in your ears, forgotten, you find the sand of the noon and on the corners of your eyes, dried salts, but not of the sea, then you know…. Every summer, anywhere I might set sails for, it’s always here that I cast anchor… On the lost continent of my childhood years, the mythical Atlantis of memories. The shattered skies of teenage yearn for the faded images of my reflected self, the way they reflect through the broken mirror of memories. Here, the sight gets perched, looking for the girl with the short trousers and the knees that were covered with scratches, between the leafage of time and in the deserted alleyways where she was forgotten. What am I looking for, I wonder, and what nails me down? What magnet directs the north pole of my feelings? When melodies resound husky, as if from within your tired, troubled mind, songs forgotten or that never existed, songs that you want to convince yourself that you remember, so as to not let yourself admit that you are so utterly alone… When the hazy, weary notes harmonize with the whispering of the leaves in the summer breeze and the sounds, following the rhythm of your breathing, are discerned with difficulty ; the practiced ear of memory gathers echoes from the partings all through the years. A memory that flutters clumsily in the air, a moist nostalgia of return or repetition, and a feeling of absence that burns on the isle of indefinable desire. …Then, when Virgo was the constellation of innocence. Then, when names were real and words held the true weight of their meaning. Even miracles were real then, because I needed them to be. Because I believed in miracles. Then. . . On the clear nights of August I would press my hands on my ears so hard, to hear the flow of the Milky Way that was spilled on the heavens, while in reality I was only listening to the flow of my blood streaming in the veins of my arms. Such were the miracles that I believed in then. Yes. That the world was as wide as a stride of my childish legs, created to suit my size. That it was given to me as a present and I was challenged to win it or lose it. But now the pain inside me gets unbearable because I was told in loud shouts never to believe in these things any more, as they are the most vulgar of lies. And I feel deadly cold inside because I knew it all along but as always, I was too scared to admit it. Even to myself . . . Now the sun lustfully strokes my limbs but does not manage to warm the unbearable cold in my heart. Light changes angle and refracts, flooding my eyes, and a scent of mint and dried soil fills my lungs . . . Then I know . . . . . .That the season is coming to an end, and with it, the crumbs of the illusory dreams, which I kept feeding my emaciated soul with. I wake up one morning and I find out not that there’s nothing left to me, but rather that I did not leave anything to myself. That, like maybugs, I held my dreams tightly laced around their necks with strings too short, tied around my wrist. Left them hum insanely from anticipation and the false hope that they could drift me along, to fly with them. And in the end, one by one they were left to moulder in their shackles. Some of them managed to break free and fly away. As far as possible. From my crooked, arthritic fingers that strangle everything. The season is coming to an end and all that is left to us is the tan lines that carve our bodies trying to retain a memory, a faint scent of pine trees and sea-ravaged rocks, for as long as they can through the winter. But summer people are different than the ones of winter. They wear swimsuits, pretend to be Adam and Eve; they are immersed in the illusion of physical bliss. In winter, wrapped in their coats, buried in their worries, they try to forget, their eyes avoid meeting. Then you know that this is the end of a season. Its colour you cannot discern, neither its scent or taste. Only thing I am left with is a string through which the beads of my mistakes are pulled. A colourful ornament to wear around my neck. But my truths are kept elsewhere. And maybe all the things that I really loved where the ones that I let slip away from me, unable to bear their weight. My thoughts, weary, cannot even stand to reproduce themselves and fall senseless on the floor. I forget them there. Cast music on my open wounds. Sing to my festered scars to heal them... joanna _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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