Memories

               
We are one in our memories.                Essentially it is the only thing that unites us.


     Do you really mean there is some difference between us? No, I just took a rubber and erased all the borders, although they're invisible on the white paper. You tell me it is a paradox, but there is nothing more paradoxical than your "rational" words, than your casual behaviour, than the rules you follow, than your grief and happiness. Don't whisper anything to me. I can't hear you. This is my city, its parallels and planes splinter the soul into a million pieces and burn you as you go through this door. Don't you knock at it, there's nothing there except for you. Having opened the door, you see a mirror, it is motionless as a rock, but it turns on its axis, returning to the same point though it seems to you that you are moving forwards. I'll pull you closer, you'll digress, but billions of years will bring you back.

     But there is something. It doesn't happen, doesn't take place, it just is. In every rustle, in the very air, you can't escape from it or avoid it. Sometimes you are seized by a feeling of infinite enlightenment, but understanding of what is going on vanishes as soon as you try to make sense of it. The sun, passion endlessly eat away and burn up at the essence and inner life of a person. Every second devoted to secretly playing Patience flows far away, leaving no chance to feel the incredible and soul-purifying taste at the tip of the tongue. Such delight at the beauty of the moment makes you spread your wings, kiss the sacred sun, breath with your fingers and shiver all over. The moment pulses through your blood and opens your eyes. It’s so nice to arouse this feeling, it’s so pleasant... and you want to keep it quiet.

     The tears of happy memories taste very sweet. We want to laugh, to smile, to shrug our shoulders, and say something to explain the tears, as if speaking alone with God. There are no splinters, nothing is broken and nobody is hurt, only a slight happy-sadness embraces you without taking leave.
You don’t cling to this minute, it just exists in you. And you don’t feel guilty, like the  feeling of heaviness inside of you having eaten a third sandwich or even a third pizza along with your friend at dinner. You would have lived this out once more in waking life; and in your mind you live it through with a greater emotion and yearning, realizing the value that comes later.


     And now it’s only wind. Light smooth air.


     The palms meet and the tops of my fingernails look directly upwards. My prayers want to know: what’s that inside you? It’s not even painful for you, but so good that you are seized by a feeling of indifference to everyday things, questions and to everything that happens so often to us. I feel like bursting into tears, but there are no tears! I want to just shout, shout out to break the breath, to you everything is as it is! So that it loses all sense and meaning. For you to know how important it was to me then. And so that I become indifferent.
I just watch and wait for what I will be given again. What I will stumble upon and with which breath I will leave this story.

     The most beautiful in you is sipped right out of your throat, vampires drain you dry... But you don’t think it because this vampire is a particular person you trust and believe in for no reason at all except that he was the source awakening your love to all living things.
    
     “I don’t know, whether I’ll see you again or this is a loss. I believe in this bond”. And I see you and nothing else. But this ellipsis won’t place all the dots above us. How many promises, in what world do you spend your days? You don’t think that some day it all ends and what you would be left with, sitting on a mouldy porch, waiting for the morning mail... You would be exhaling damp air and thinking back of me. Because we asked for nothing. And you are afraid... You are so frightened that you live on another planet to look at people only through the thick  lens of a telescope... But you don’t see today, but the day before last... I sympathize with you, but my story is not connected with an image any more. As if it were not you at all.


     All of them, just like you, gave me inspiration, feelings, presented me with myself. With them I could breathe myself in, see myself and see God in them. I wished so much for them to read my thoughts, to know everything that happens inside me now, but I want to leave it as it is. Like spontaneity and sincerity will wash romance away and bring discontent, puzzlement, unnecessary questions, break-ups and former expectations and will do nothing but raise the blessed dust, that always irritates the eyes so painfully.



    It stabs, cuts, aches constantly... like a feeling of hatred.


    It’s so strong that I’m overflowing with love for you and I want to scratch your face over. Though it’s not you who worries me and everything’s far different in my life now. Yet I live on the same land with you. Collect bunches of the same yellow leaves we were pressing with the soles of our boots. They interfused into us, they drew images and stereotypes. And we left everything as it was not wishing to struggle. And all is one because it won’t ever happen to me.


               ***

     Elena opened a shopping bag - crispy and papery - wet from freshly-baked bread rolls. My stomach in hungry anticipation. When did she eat last? It seems, yesterday morning, but today she met her   dream man who as an angel, as a messenger of God, handed her a bag while his face dressed with disgust and sorrow at the helpless creature. 
      
        - You need it more.

     You... we. Elena lowered her hand down to her belly and contentedly gets a strong impression of a bump and light movements inside. What did he want to tell us? But now we need each other so much, we’re brought together by a big shared vessel.
Elena slightly smiled, it is so pleasant to understand your importance to another creature that may even be inside of her. Will it resemble him? His face has already been forgotten though… I’ll recall him only with your birth, baby.

     Elena covered George with a torn blanket, he mumbled something to her, trying to say that he, well, wasn’t sleepy at all… He wants to keep company, wants to touch her belly, wants to tell her how his day was.

      - What? What’s up?! Sleep!

      He draws the blanket off and beats her hands painfully. Black and blue circles spread over the skin…
      Elena looks at her hands, scratched and beaten. She wants no more pain, she hates her brother who can’t say anything meaningful… He just mumbles and beats her…


      Don’t shout at me, I don’t want to listen to you. Leave Elena alone with her thoughts and her baby. Don’t prevent child from growing, to drink from his mother and to cry. And he’s so alive and beautiful.


     No, no, no… Let go!..
     Don’t hurt me anymore… don’t press my bruises…
     Because I don’t want to scream anymore. I just smile and pass my wet hand over his hair.
     He looks at me with different eyes protecting me from your bad influence. He isn’t George, you don’t want to mumble in reply. And you don’t feel like keeping silence as if with you.
     It’s just music because I’m not indifferent, there’s no hatred here…


     Elena and George go hand-in-hand along the dark underpass, for invalids lifts don’t work. The underpass smells of roses and of leaving impression of love and fear.
You don’t paint on the walls anymore, you are tabula rasa… I rub you out again with my rubber, we are in the same body, you are my child. You are a creation of my imagination.


               ***


     Anna comes into the room again and again to read her prayers. She always appeared in front of everybody, when there was a painful lump in her throat, conscious - obtuse, words - worthless, but feelings are more valuable than inner silence. This is a miracle, this is a sweet laughter. Anna passed her hand over his head and listened to him. Her brother told her about his childhood, it was endless, it was all his life, because he hasn’t changed at all, he remained himself.
     The child tapped with his heels tenderly, as if saying to Anna: I’m here, I’m with you.
     Anna rocked slightly sitting on a chair. Thinking over what she has left to do, soon she will fly up and will levitate in earthly happiness. She’s made of the clouds themselves and of transparent breath.
     She’s free and holds George in her hands. He’s grateful that she doesn’t reject him and feeds him with her attention. Anna passes her hand over his back, it is like he hasn’t any vertebrae at all…


               ***

     Don't speak to me, I seem to have lost all the strength to listen to you. I love you so that I cannot see and breath the smells any more. You lead me by the hand, you pull me along the dark corridors, you rock me on your knees. You promise me a funny game but you don't even let me grab your hands.


               ***

     She stands under the shower. Elena feels the nice touch of the gentle drops, washing away her existence. What did she live for and what will she be living for if she has lived so far, does it make any sense for her and for the things she is living with now. Half an hour under the shower and she'll wash everything off. If it's better to leave it as it is, just say "yes".
     She doesn't see the sky, she looks into the ceiling, not covered with tile, but filled with drops of rain. Hair is washed away by the shampoo, leaving them on her hands; her fingers get enmeshed. The drain swarms with hairs, and dark, black as snakes, they play with soapy water.
     Down from the forehead a waterfall of thoughts flows.…
     And the world is so harmoniously and disturbingly filled with cosmic noise, in the ears a shell sings, remembering the voice of the ocean, the ocean that engendered everything around. The connections and threads between us I pull as if strings of my own hair, until I get aches in my head and inner horror. Every breath Elena devoted to her feelings and memories. Alienation from the thoughts of the concealed and the things having happened to her someday promised her fear, physical suffering, entreaties for help…


     I don't bring you back into my head because I have already refused you a few times. We walked with you by the hand, but it ached inside of me so much, my stomach twisted with pain. You didn’t tell me that you fly freely. And I didn't even promise. I was hovering in the sky too, but amid my own planets.
     Your head didn't lie on my shoulders, you didn't sleep and didn't hope. I’ve set you free... but the memories of my past, even without you, are alive in me and their noble yet such frail tiny heart is beating.
     Her light thoughts ran down her knees, her feet were dissolved in the puddle of memories. She shrank away from happiness and disappeared, as soon as it was possible to do so and to pretend.
     And suddenly, without a slap.


     She bid farewell to him, to her torturer. George turned away, he didn’t want to look at the splotches of paint in the bath and the snakes at the drain. He was dismissed. Rejected, he renounced the love of those who took care of him. Excuse me that I haven’t passed my hand over your head, handicapped George, - whispered the paint on the floor.
Yet you are my brother, you’ll forgive my mistakes.


    She just washed herself, meaninglessly.


               ***


     She doesn’t exist anymore? What’s this… Flights of imagination?
     He slowly came to the edge, to the place, where some seconds ago his sister was so beautifully disappearing. It was very wet on the floor, an ocean of tears sloshed under George’s feet. The shower was silent, the drops, by their own will, skulked in dark lines, not dropping a sound. Slowly George pushed aside the transparent curtain… A bright picture of colours, having spread over the walls and the floor of the bath, appeared clearly before his cloudy eyes... The stuffy room let her soul out, smiling, happy to see her brother.
     He stretched out his hand and dipped his hand into the paint. Oily, they flowed down his fingers, leaked under the nails. With a clumsy, timid movement he touches the splotches.


     He came to the mirror, saw his reflection there as if he did not recognize it... he dirtied his ugly face with colours, painting himself... drawing stripes on his forehead, the results of long thinking. On his lips - the kisses that have never happened in his life, on his bald head - the hair that not a single lady-love of his had stroked...
     On the mirror he painted the one who tormented his conscience, the one, he loved more than anything in the world. The one, he granted the best of his qualities leaving nothing to himself... He drew her with the paints, with what was left of her.


               ***

     Somebody's knocking. Knocking at the door.
     Involuntary he gives a jump but doesn't take fright.
     Knocking. Insistently but not angrily. His heart is being filled with love, he's full of hopes, he waits for homecomings. He waits for his greatest recollection.
     It opens... with a loud creak, the door in beads of perspiration and in steam. She comes in. Loose hair, delicate scent. He didn't remember the colour of her hair but suddenly it was shining with an angelic halo, that it was impossible to see anything, a pleasant tingling in the eyes, of tears and light. She spread out her arms waiting for hugs.
     He rushed towards her. Some mysterious force drew George to her, it was so natural, as if he was joining existence itself. His body felt something hard and soft. Something tenderly bulging was pressing against his stomach. It gently tapped with its heel. And with its heart.
     How he loved his sister, his flesh and blood... Worshipped her, called her, waited for her.
     Anna came to him in peace, greeting his admiration and naive amazement with a smile. She took his hands, poured out the star ashes on his colourful head. George crossed himself and fell on his knees in the face of perfection.
     He shed bitter tears recollecting everything... He drew himself images and was delighted in them.
     George took her by the hand and drove her towards the exit by force. He felt the forthcoming birth of a new human being...
George squeezed Anna's wrist with the same force, black and blue circles like paint spread over her skin. She was smiling, it wasn't painful, Anna was flying after him...
They ran out, the air abruptly broke into their stuffy souls and opened their lungs.
     The child (triumphantly, but not anxiously) gave a shout.


               ***


     The sky was getting overcast. The clouds were moving unhurriedly towards each other as if they were flirting and coquetting. One figure was changed by another, dragons by dogs, birds by mermaids… The false faces of the clouds didn’t stay the same and only God knew who played on the heavenly stage that day.
     Anna looked into the depth of the sky lying on the wet grass.
     George mumbled his prayers to the sky waiting for its reply.
     Everyone felt the smell of the long-expected thunderstorm.


     The wind was heaving and picking up. The marathon of life began to play the organ music, chores broke into song. Flying up high, much higher and falling down crumbly, the sand painfully got into the eyes of those who looked at the sky. Electricity, a magnetic pull between us was only over a distance. The current doesn’t run between two connected poles that have become one in a passionate hug, but bores afterwards. Once we try to separate ourselves from WE, the steepness of ups and downs will be instantly felt… at the level of mountains and ravines…
     It blinked.
     Like a light of happiness.


     It struck. The sound wafted to us by memories of our glory days.


               ***


     Anna held him in her arms after sufferings and harmony with nature. Oh, there you have the creature!  The incarnation of all things that pulled us by our soles for so long. The one we were clinging to for so long, the one that made all muscles on our faces shudder because of the unwillingness to take things as they are.
     George was running somewhere far in the fields. Laughing, free, liberated, with his dreams of love having realized his dreams of love.
     A new birth, a new thought and dreams.

               ***

     The baby was lying in Anna’s arms, she looked at it fondly. There were no rain clouds at the sky.
     Its lovely eyes twinkled with lashes stuck together.
     It breathed in the scent of flowers, grass, trees.
     It memorized warm hands for ever, a gentle breath, smells, sounds.
     The baby appeared with no memories. And at the first moment got filled with them. It’ll get an amount of palettes and range of memories that will forever tie up the unseen connections with silk ribbons like the umbilical cord.
     With each of us rubbing out the borders.


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Edited by Therese Morley