Love as a barbed wire

(translation by Camelia Șuiu & Florentina Santamaria)

This I love you uttered by everyone from dusk till dawn
doesn’t mean anything to me – it sounds like a broken barrel left hollow

for thousands of years people have been telling each other these silly words
with pouting lips like a cheap brass trumpet
just as they say good afternoon and good evening and goodbye
so as not to make a fool of myself and to fit in I had also written it on a cardboard
a shoebox lid from the shoes of a dead person

as soon as my lovers appeared at the window
the bodiless ones resembling some nymphs chasing twopenny dreams
I would show them the cardboard
signaling that I couldn’t go out pointing to the small red spots made with a marker
poor thing, he’s got scarlet fever, they said
and departed towards themselves hunched with frustration
resentfully grumbling: damned disease, go ahead and love him if you can

behind the yellow blinds like the moon, I would giggle mischievously
but the last one gridlocked me

she took the form of a sheet of paper on which a hymn was written
and she crawled under the door
she snatched the marker from my hand and drew scarlet fever spots on herself
she said something about defiance
about my tender blood in her veins
about the futility of the other world which had suddenly disappeared from her glazy eyes
about some kind of a miracle

I have no idea where she came from, so don’t ask me that
she told me she had left the veggie preserve boiling on the stove
to hell with that, I can find more eggplants in other lives
but a marker like this one is not to be found elsewhere

when I go to the frige I stumble over her feet
looking like an adorable crab
her love has clung to my pants like a barbed wire
and whoever got tangled in a barbed wire knows one can’t get rid of it
it’s a sort of love’s absolute

and now you no longer say that scanty I love you
sounding like good evening and good afternoon and goodbye
you don’t say anything anymore
you just hold those marker-made spots in your arms
and you’re in awe as if they were real.