Afterword

air is sharp cutting cutting like shiny blades 

winter is ending - I prayed for this moment to come -

snowdrops are still struggling 

to break the moist earth and rise rise

memories still cling, still flicker like flames 

a feeling of endings dissolves the air

a feeling of release 

as old skin peels off, dry eyes rest

no more tears no more anticipation, wounds

from words expected but unsaid

a sense of heaviness presses

the atmosphere of sun striving to slice through dark skies 

of storms past,

the atmosphere of waking from deep sleeps, eyes weighty 

soft like your skin 

the lines, paths, curves and wrinkles of bedsheets after nightmares

or after love 

birds have been hiding inside my chest now they are free

you made them free, opening me up like a seashell 

a sign of spring that is to come, spring is letting go

spring with its raw newness 

green wishes, a smell of awakening

the smell of life 

strip off the wintery layers of gloom, terrifying ghosts 

that brought loath and death with them

not love as I thought, as I felt

strip off the layers, let the skin touch the new earth

hold on to the roots that grow 

the nakedness absorbing shadows of the world 

i do not take anymore hope or anymore dreams 

they steal steal and mask hearts

illusory prospects that something good something different will happen

in fact they devour time devour destinies 

skies hang like crystal chandeliers 

reflecting a world upside down small deformed 

changing green yellow white red black 

fluttering in its fast momentum; a world of colours and opposites 

yet i want to be part of it, 

of orange scorching countries, of lost tourists in lost places,

of the coming and going lovers, of changeable seasons and colours,

of dying and being born again and again never defeated.

i want to be part of all this

let this bizarre miracle unfold inside me 

and if i fall, 

there will always be the coming of spring

bearing catharsis and rebirths