HUMBLING

POSTED IN contemporary poetry April 22, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HUMBLING

I wake up at 7.00 a.m. I drink my coffee, watching through the window the same lifeless street, the same trees still naked, same flats tall and covering my horizon, same portion of sky changing colors from dark to Light…Actually this is my only sign that hours pass and day becomes night, and night becomes day: the sky and its coloring…
Sometimes is the Moon: a quarter, half, full, and again…
Otherwise I feel like I am living and reliving the same day and night in a time-loop.
Soon the trees will become slowly green, so, here it is, another sign that time passes: the change of season.
After the coffee, I am in a sort of anxiety over to listen to the news or not. I choose not. I am done with the tears, the sadness, the fear.
I also fight over calling or not my parents. I am tired also to feel their tiredness, their nervousness, their intoxicating fear and fury.
Well, some days I call…actually every day I call. Aaaand after that I digest my frustration.
These days I talked with almost all my Facebook friends, especially my kids who live in the afflicted countries.
I feel an urge to beg them: “give me a small daily sign that you and yours are alive and well”…
Lunch. My appetite is lost. I eat something, I don’t care what, just to fill the void. I watch my husband and I know that he is also lost. Lost in this never-ending time loop, lost in this vastness of nothing and nothingness of vast.
Since march the 7th I didn’t exit the flat. It was a day to remember. I walked through the city with my husband not knowing that suddenly we’ll enter a loop.
My hair needed a change. I colored it myself.
My face needs the calming hands of a cosmetologist… my legs need to walk. In my time-loop it is a strangeness: I see time passing with my hair roots, my growing nails, my too rested legs.
I watch the ceiling. I watch the books. I am saturated with thinking.
This year, 2020, will be a non lived year. I shall remove it from the calendar. It may be as well still 2019, March.
I talk to my sister…she has a yard, at least something great.
In this loop it is heaven to have a yard, to be able to stay outside, breathing the Spring, watching the sunset and sunrise.
I can’t do even that: my windows are crowded by other flats, I see nothing but buildings.
I miss Crete, the sun, the sea, the friends I have there.
I miss being free. I am humbled by this unseen microscopical being which kills.
I took for granted every basic human right I had, blissfully, idiotically unaware that one cursed day time will stay still. No, time will pass but us, the humanity will be forced to stay still and feel the punishment of passing seconds.
I know how it started this 2020 but I do not know how it will end. Will I ever live in the same world? Will I ever hug my friends, travel freely, enjoy the nature, walk until I fall?
Perhaps not. Perhaps my hair will have to be shortened, like my nails, like my appetite for everything, like my list of well being happy friends, like my hopes, my expectations…
How does one exit a time loop? By learning not to repeat the same one wrong thing one kept doing? By learning the one wise good lesson one never learnt?
And if so, then what would that be?

 

Maria Magdalena Biela