By Anouk Pardon
My little cousin has built a pillow fort around me.
He has wrapped me in blankets
bedded me in cushions
and now he tells me stories about his friends.
His sister is stroking my hair
with her small, little hands in the sweetest manner
I have ever felt
as if she could never get tired of it
as if she could go on for days
and she tells me that my skin feels like the leaves of a water lily
and that my eyes look like ponds
and I watch the water in her blue eyes
rush to the shores of her irises
and I believe her.
There are some things
I know I should love
so I love them obediently
and then there are others –
(with which I don’t even have to try)
And as I am lying
I can feel every fibre in my body
every cell aching and hurting.
I am exhausted.
I bleed fatigue
and it oozes through my pores, and my skin
spills onto the floor, the wood, and the carpet
as if my body is a heavy sponge
that is so full already
it cannot absorb any more.
My sister joins us.
She is laughing alongside my little cousin
and he pretends that he does not like being kissed and hugged by us
but I know he is lying
because he stays
right between the pillows and the blankets
and his tiny body is curled up
in a way that reminds me of the small, little boy
I first saw more than a decade ago.
Oh, my bones are so heavy
my flesh weighs a thousand kilograms
and I am glued to the floor
while my little cousin
is cosied up right between my arms.
And the darkness settles
in every corner of the room
but it’s warm, and it’s safe, and there’s air
in this womb
made of pillows.
And I sleep among people
(I got lost, but now I’m found)
at the center of the universe
and I feel weirdly connected to the soft ground
as if there is bark where I should have skin
as if there are roots where I should have legs
as if there are branches where I should have arms
and they are softly moving in the wind.
