lena

Lena shared her desk with another girl named Lena and one day I will paint a picture called, “I Never Met a Lena that I Didn’t Like.” I will capture them in spring, sitting in the desk in front of the teacher’s, hiding behind a vase full of lilacs and the picture will be so lush you will want to walk up to it, let it run through your fingers like warm sand, press your nose close to it to smell the heavy dreamy scent of the purple flowers and try to catch the faint taste of spring in Zahorie coming through the window from behind the two Lenas and into your nose, passing across your tongue where it inexplicably tastes “green” and cool like well water and buzzes in your head sunshine thick and all of this will work over you until you want to stand close to the painting and lick it, afraid that may have missed something.

Tara the Waitress

There is something about you-the pale blonde sunshine in your eyes or the endless possibilities of a summer afternoon in your voice that wake the dormant dragons of memory-stirring Paul and Jana and the hill with one lone tree standing over the reservoir at Kunov from somewhere deep inside me. You, seemingly unconnected, a meandering jazz riff, free form poetry, standing at the side of the table are suddenly the connection, a momentary way back– a vessel of the past.

In a moment that I don’t think about often, I am walking down a grass covered hill. The grass is deep, above my knees and in another month it will be cut for hay and left to dry in huge stacks on the side of the emerald hills. It is Paul’s birthday and we have just spent the night on top of the hill above Kunov, high above the gardens, drinking wine, dancing under the late April moon. Paul and Jana disappear just outside the light of the fire. Mitch and Leco play Skoda je Laska- the pity of love-softly on the guitar. Emery takes one long drink out of the bottle of Skalica red, staining his lips the color of ripe pomegranate. I walk home alone for reasons I cannot remember through the tall grass, the night is soft, and the moon hangs low over the apartment buildings in Sotina. There are voices, the snort of a horse, the timber creaking pull of a cart. It is a procession of medieval pilgrims-ghastly white-led by a pale knight on a pale horse passing in front of me. I fall into the grass and watch their feet moving within arm’s length. I want to reach out and grab hold, dragged along anywhere. I stay there for an hour/a hundred years until I can no longer hear them. I have slipped into madness. I tell no one. I love it. I make it back to my flat sometime before 6 and don’t know where I put the time.

And suddenly you are back at the table, placing a glass of iced tea in front of me, your hand wrapped around the sweating glass, a piece of hair falling into your face, your thigh against the edge of the table. I want to dust the glass for your fingerprints-harness the memory-or paint/love you like Lautrec as you are now or maybe I will just place you in the procession of pilgrims-ghastly beautiful, a believer, a vessel. I take a long drink of tea, cold and bitter and wonder how will I tip you on such a thing?