Siesta breakfast
Cool fresh fruit on hot-slept sheets
Life awakes again
Moments
Beach (Dunkirk)
Bullets spit up sand
Hands over ears we cower
No red poppies bloom
I’m sorry
Jak thought he would write something a little different, something in a language that was not his, but it all went wrong. He thought he said he was sorry but it was not that at all.
It was an hour before
It was an hour before. Hearts raced. People looked at the sky. This year, perhaps this year? The gates opened. So did the heavens.
I held the old man’s hand
I held the old man’s hand. I had never asked his stories and now, as his last breath left, the library inside him burned.
Don’t touch my car
You always told me not to touch your car. It was a big thing to you. Don’t touch my car, dude. And you’d always find the fingerprint or the licked finger letter I left for you and you would say don’t touch my car and I would and you would hit me. Don’t touch my car, dude. But now, now we’ve raced one of those ridiculous races, lights off on the clifftop road, and my car touches yours and you’ve spun and hit the wall and somersaulted and hit a tree and another and now in the moonlight your car is on its side in the olive grove, gently hissing. I touched your car. Dude.
All the stories come from the sea
All the stories come from the sea. They follow the rivers upstream, up brooks and burns until they reach the hilltops where the shepherds and the eagles carry them away to spread across the land. All the stories come from the sea.
The doorbell rings
[The doorbell rings]
Who is it?
Daniele. Come down, I’ve got something for you.
Can’t you come up?
No, come down.
Ok.
[I go downstairs and out of the main door. Daniele is standing there in the midday sun, a cardboard box in his arms. He holds it out to me.]
Here you are. It’s for the anniversary.
Thank you. But you shouldn’t have.
Take it, take it.
[I take the box. It is the size of a shoe box but lighter than a shoe box with shoes in would be.]
What is it?
It’s for you. For the anniversary.
[Daniele starts up his Vespa and rides away. I stand in the midday sun and take the lid off the box. It is not sealed. I look inside.]
[Later, on the telephone.]
Thank you Daniele. What’s his name?
I called him Twenty-five. That’s how many years it is, isn’t it?
Yes, yes, twenty-five. It’s twenty-five.
[I stop talking and look down at the tortoise walking across the floor.]
Hello, Twenty-five. Here’s to us.
taken home
Imagine a day when someone takes you home from the sea, salt sun scorched, and you sleep and you are woken with watermelon to slake your thirst.
Remember that day when someone took you home from the sea, salt sun scorched, and you slept and you were woken with watermelon to slake your thirst.
Poem on coming home from the sea
summer afternoon
sea-fresh skin on scorched salt skin
summer evening, night
simonsalento 