Melancholy

my life

I had been asked a few times to dance with young boys wearing an unnatural, stiff air of boldness. Sometimes my arms hair raised with repulsion. It was as if I were a duckling swimming in dirt, fearing to step over the others shoes. Large feet and hair that did not obey to combs. Inside my round body I felt even more rounder, emotions were drawing entangled curves and vine spirals. I was asking how many steps must I take on the right or on the left, counting them while music flowed around me like a train speeding in a flag station. Boys seemed to be carved in wood and there wasn’t a fairy queen to give them life to be little adventurers. It was better in childhood when I was climbing the wild morello tree in my garden, dreaming that every branch was a room in my house. I would have liked boys to be like that cherry, to find place for my bedroom or my kitchen filled with dolls.

You don’t know how to move, you’re like wood, someone said to me when we tried to dance tango. All girls have dancing in their blood he said and I didn’t agree. I wasn’t all girls.

I preferred to listen to piano sonatas on stormy days, my heartbeats were equal and calm. I couldn’t understand why for others everything was so tormented, how they could dance and swirl while skies were so clear and stars shone so brightly.

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On my living room carpet yellow roses are blooming. Curtains are sprinkled with poppies and cornflowers, that’s what I feel sometimes. It is here where I sleep because I remember more easily how I was drowning myself in fresh cut grass in the fields, under open skies. It is a larger place here. When I was little I saw women transforming bottles in puppies or kittens wearing knitted cloth, whiskers and little ears. I wouldn’t like to have one of those and I don’t need fish swimming in a small aquarium.

Sometimes I build with needle and threads a lonely house near a lake with swans. I pour water periodically on my apartment plants. The green ones remain, those with flowers wither. I like to chop in tiny pieces parsley and garlic. I don’t cook pastry or sweets, I don’t use cinnamon or bottled essences. I never wear perfumes. Sometimes I open an old drawer where I hid and tightly corked up a perfume from my youth, realizing that it becomes more and more cloudy as time goes by.

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How wonderful it is to watch seagulls flying on my window! I can’t remember when they came in our town, far from sea. It is like a slow song, like a white waltz. I stop the music and sometimes verify if the front door is locked. The scent of a story book with brown stains spreads under my bed lamp. The ugly duckling falls asleep in the little match girl’s leap.