Читать книгу Northwood - Maryse Meijer - Страница 18

INTAGLIO

The striped mattress, how thin it was, the wire cot beneath

biting into my bones the blankets

folded double did not help.

I don’t know what makes a person willing.

One evening I ran out of ink

and that same evening you brought me three new jars

and we sat testing them to see

if the different colors had different smells

or if black was really distinguishable

via a faint taste of licorice. We laughed like pigs.

Showing each other our colored tongues.

You put your head on my shoulder

and knocked a drop of ink on the mattress,

where it bloomed

and darkened

and dried. I got quiet, watching it.

What, you said.

I shook my head.

I had stripped myself of every other longing,

of every possible

human comfort but in that moment, eating poison

from the jars,

how wealthy I was, how fragile, how strong, like the strange

skin of a bubble that can resist so much and then

nothing at all.

I watched my happiness sink through the unmade bed

where the blanket had been pushed aside,

one stain among many.

Open your mouth, you said,

and I did,

but it was too late, and the mattress was dry.