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  • Fog, and: For Zirgu Pasts, and: Daugava, Daugava, and: A Woman’s Happiness
  • Inga Gaile
    Translated by Ieva Lešinska

Fog

Look, this is fog, sweetheart, real fog, look, what you have in your hands is a damp, wrinkled map, look, here’s the turn that would have taken you to the checkpoint, look, here’s the boy you won’t be able to look in the eye now, look, here’s autumn, leaves rustling underfoot, look, here are your friends at the bar who have no idea what to do with the photos you gave them, showing a man on his knees by a twelve-year-old girl with her pants down. look, this is fog, kids, real fog, indeed, look, here are people who will never be able to look you in the eye, look, here’s the earth and, see, you can already safely say as much. You stand, you grow, you learn to control your panic attacks, you become a bridge, a tree, you learn to look people in the eye, you make friends with people without arms and legs because you think they understand you, you write this poem, sweetheart, for the thousandth time, hoping that one day it will vanish. Look, this is fog, kids, real fog, streams of snot and sperm, a solstice of tears.

And I come out quietly by the church in the forest, eons have passed and I’m still wearing the same sweatpants with the broken elastic. And people look at me and some say—well, really, couldn’t she write more tactfully, a little more decently, but, if you ask me, I say, fuck it, children should know that the world is no bed of roses, fuck it, I say, why the fuck do you have to be so tragic, we liked you better before, when you drank a lot, got wasted, gained weight and fucked anyone who gave you the time of day. So lie down here underneath us.

That really is fog, kids, for once, it’s real fog. And I have nothing else besides this worn-out, biting, sinewy tongue and the fingers that write these words on the screen as though on a broad lake. I’m coming out of the forest. And I ask you, kids, you in your family summer houses, living rooms, in the backs of cars, in your conjugal beds, you, children of all sexes in some kind of saunas, drunk and drugged, you, kids who have survived, I tell you it’s scary for sure, but still—please finally come out. Or wait a little, be gentle with yourselves.

And I will begin to try to breathe quietly here. [End Page 125]

For Zirgu Pasts*

How strange, that room with worn, black floorboards, where, pouring through the window, curtains wave, a cactus on the windowsill has bloomed, calling out from behind the door, horses march. How strange—that room, you go in barefoot remembering, everything was like that you were embarrassed, angry, red, the deck was rocking under your feet. It all caused pain, every touch, and every life spoke in bass to you, and all the streets were arteries that brought friends to your heart. How strange, time has clothed us, shoed us, it has saluted us, it all whirls in a waltz, it all has broken up in shards, yet our feet were once bare, yet once we were on fire, we were so tired, young, we were all coughing, and we were among strangers, and all of them were ours, morning woke the night smiling through the wind, how strange, it was just now— we walked in so angry, barefoot and red, we walked in and did not see the windows and curtains that waved good-bye to someone, it all ached and screamed, and joy was like a waterfall that flowed across the street, and friends got into the boat and screaming sank with it, a painful, stinging morning came out of a lilac night. How strange, it was just now, that road from windowsill to courtyard with the verdant horses, where kisses stung and wouldn’t let us go. And now we’re back...

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