GOLDMARIE

I close the glass.
And for a moment longer that lingers in the fingers: you don't belong —
(not like a sentence, more like dust,
that clings to the skin when you touch a strange light).
And then the apartment breathes in.
Black floor tiles, cold and precise.
Gold in the mosaic — not glory, just seam,
where the light settles when I don't want a grand illumination.
In the bathroom just tiny lights,
(so nothing has to be explained)
and the silence finally resembles silence.
Once I believed that an image is closeness.
That a face is enough — and it will be home.
I t w a s a c i r c l e:
klik — kruh — klik —
and black posed as destiny.
Bad luck walks softly.
It doesn't enter through doors, rather through a gap:
in a stranger's smile that belongs elsewhere,
in a voice that knows how to distinguish,
but doesn't know how to lay a hand on the back of a neck.
In a mother in a black veil standing by the roads
(and says: this is not how it is done; this is not how you walk; this is not how you love),
in that stubbornness which sucks out dreams
and calls it care.
And I once used to agree with her.
(Because I mistook harshness for order.)

Only you —
You did not come as an answer.
You came as a step.
At first faceless, only in writing,
in the silence that doesn't press — and yet holds.
M Y S T E R I O U S.
And then (without drama) the secret turned,
and only left:
G E N T L E.
And I fell in love again —
not with the image,
but into the fact that the image turned into a person,
who can be real even without witnesses.
You wear my gifts around your neck.
A droplet that smells of an imaginary forest.
A pendant that looks as if it fell out of a fantasy
(yet warms against your skin, and thereby becomes truth).
And the white shirt on you —
it is no celebration,
there is peace:
a surface one can press their forehead against.
Your lips —
not a promise.
An affirmation.
And when we sit facing each other,
the table knows how to create distance,
as if home were just furniture.
You erase that distance with a single touch.

Subtly.
(You say more with that than with a sentence.)
And sometimes you are simply naked and calm,
as if the body didn't have to prove a thing.
Strength without cruelty.
Authority without humiliation.
And beside it, I am learning
not to dodge happiness.
But even this isn't a "flawless" fairy tale.
Sometimes something stands between us that has no name.
T w o n u m b e r s.
A sign we didn't invent.
Something beyond our power that cannot be forced.
And we don't try to force it.
We just hold on so that
so that the "between" doesn't become a cage,
but a seam.
Like in that story told in a whisper:
one forgets — yet returns.
One is cursed into silence — yet breathes.
Around stands the forest, bark, shadow.
And somewhere an axe is ready,
because the world is afraid when love lasts.
And yet:
forehead to forehead,
a kiss that has no audience,
and the curse grows tired.

And at other times it's that modern story again,
where love runs faster than the world,
and the world catches up to it anyway —
not out of malice,
just by its sheer weight.
And so the two learn to love in such a way,
so they wouldn't destroy each other.
(To stay true to themselves even when they can't have everything.)
And then there is one more story, the one I like best:
a boy with a book,
reading until nothing comes to the window,
and the other walks through a landscape
that is crumbling under his feet.
One holds the world together with a word.
The second keeps pace with him.
And when they meet,
fantasy stops being an escape
and becomes a home.
(That's how you seem to me:
like the one who walks —
and I, who finally know how to stay.)
Black in the apartment is no longer a sentence.
It is a color that lasts.
Gold is no longer an ornament.
It is a place where the light stops.
And white —
White is the wall I once made lighter,
because one small love left
and left a quiet hole behind.

I won't say her name.
But it had paws.
Some departures send their breath on.
And it reached you.
And you reached me.
So in the end I don't bow to "us".
I bow to love that knows how to change colors,
without changing the truth.
That bad luck is what sticks to fingers made of glass —
and gold is what remains,
when you place your fingers on the skin.
That a man can wait for twenty years
(not for a face,
for a touch that remains)
and then receive it so quietly
that he only notices it by how
his world stops shaking.
And when sometimes blackness appears on my fingers,
I do not pass it on to a person.
I do not pass it into my voice.
Only onto paper.
And then:
lights in the bathroom,
your lips,
your sweater,
and a silence that doesn't hurt.

(no names.
just y o u.)