the body of mothers keeps growing while
you write. did you know it still holds the cells
of unborn children who once floated in your warm, wet womb?
even decades later, you remain a host.
just as soft and shadowed.
when I walk down from the university
toward the yellow ravine, then down those stairs so beautiful—
I wonder. have I really arrived here, or do I suffer from a syndrome
that lets me see, like a monochrome film,
memories from another world?
compulsively I remember
the white, rough firewood my grandmother
used to shove into the stove’s mouth
and the fire lit itself, as if by magic.
the grass and knotweed, smelling of rain,
and how I used to roll through it.
the hens that gave me a sense of peace as I watched them crossing the yard
surrounded by that wooden fence.
//
now everything feels like a dream. the body of a mother who does not forget.
the toy display you used to watch for hours. the doll that said “mama.” now I’m afraid that if I looked back, I would see the fire dead, and my grandmother — silent,
holding a piece of wood
that would no longer burn.
the sun will explode one day. and the tiny expelled embryos will begin to search for their hosts. they’ll look a little like newborn chicks
stretching their necks far too early, with wet beaks, toward food.
it will be a sad scenario. you’ll cry. the cells will begin to scream.
did you know the japanese have invented a method
to record your dreams, so you can later watch them on a screen?
I am terrified.
because I know what I’d see:
my body, naked, lying still in darkness,
its skin white like a page burned around the edges.
me — the child —
who doesn’t enter the dream,
only watches it from afar,
me — the child who chose to dream. now just a random host
for a child I will never know.
--Anon, 06/06/2025
Theme : Others -- "Memories"