Encounter
The light has a yellow shade on the facades of the houses.
The shadow of the leafless trees on the walls and in the street
resemble the shadow of foreign soldiers with the machine guns.
The shadows have changed
the voices have changed — they’ve become hesitant, like
someone who is trying to find a street number, he makes two
steps, looks at the window, where is the doorbell? What
sound would the doorbell make in the hallway with
the unfamiliar stairs?
When you say tomorrow is as if you want to console someone.
You don’t talk. The rooms feel sleepy in the silence.
The fingertips of silence remain on the shelves, the chairs,
the railings of the bed, like a sick woman who gets up
in the night to get a glass of water. She can’t stand. She leans
on the furniture, she trips on her nighty and falls again
on her bed before she finds the water pitcher.
We were thirsty.
Loneliness never had a glass of water.
Her trembling fingertips still stay on the dusty surfaces.
Back then we had time. We watered the rose-garden.
We chit-chatted.
It isn’t the same anymore. Now you count words and colors.
You can’t establish their weight.
Alice died. She will never be in our company anymore,
as during those afternoons when we dreamed of things.
Her summer shoes
will remain under her bed like two white dead birds and
her little watch, stopped, on the empty table, like a star
you see through the window shutters of the desolate
house.
Manolis Aligizakis 