27 Feb Ocalenie, By Anna Wodzicki
And so we go back:
Back to where ancient spruce stand sentinel over the place where you were born.
Where all that’s left is a horseshoe and a brick in a muddy field,
quietly making their way back to dust.
This is my inheritance you say,
an arm sweeping wide to gesture at the hollowed-out clearing.
A riot of vines and greenery and sickening pastoral tranquillity where a house once stood.
And now all that’s left of you is a horseshoe and a brick in this muddy field.
Wind rips at my lungs,
and the rush of silence claws at my ears.
The mud sucks at my borrowed brown boots,
anchoring me in place.
A type of homecoming.
The suction is strong so I stumble a bit as I walk toward you.
How were they able to rip you away?
Did they uproot you so violently that your little boots were torn from your little feet?
How long did they stay there?
Two tiny sentries standing watch,
small proof that you existed.
And the distance stretching between us is wider than the 20 paces it would take
to reach you.
There is something immovable between us,
and I would stumble over the sounds needed to name it,
so we circle each other.
Endlessly.
Nie rozumiesz, you say.
But can’t you see me?
I’m holding the horseshoe in one hand and the brick in the other and I feel the rusty flakes of metal cutting into my palm and the brick’s thick dust is collecting under my nails and I’m allowing the mud to pull my feet in one direction and my legs to pull them in another,
and the land does remember.
I promise.
Can’t you hear it?
I’m letting it whisper in my ears until they bleed.
And maybe I can build a boat from those spruce trees and sail across the gaping chasm filling with my blood to reach those distant shores,
and, there I’ll find chamomile growing in the shade,
and I’ll grab greedy fistfuls of it, juice leaking through my fingers and onto the soft, black soil.
Hands stinging, I will call upon the horse whose shoe this was,
and I’ll stumble onto it’s shadowy back,
and we’ll ride down Lysa Gora,
down to the stone stream,
can’t you feel it?
And maybe there I can build a bridge from this single brick.
Crush it up into so many pieces and lay them, painstakingly, one next to another,
until I can run into your arms over a path of dust,
feet stained red.
All I want is to put my hand on your arm.
Hand on arm.
An anchor? A bridge? A homecoming? Proof? A dam holding back dust?
The word is in me,
it clogs my foreign throat.
I feel it cling to my trachea in thick, sticky strands,
and it makes a funny sound when I breathe.
In the distance, a train whistle sounds,
warning of its approach.
And so the memory fills your veins.
Distends them.
Pushes at your skin and snakes through your body; stark and blue and unspeakable.
You flinch.
And so you go back.