Julia Szychowiak

Sleep below the line. Reels of slides, a nebula

in the lungs. A dream about glass, where a child

runs. Hands combing space and the air

in camouflage; before waking up.

Sleep in a uniform, with hands on the mouth

not to reveal oneself to the hostile dawn.

Always the same face, a strictly confidential

distribution of light and shade.

I’d like to describe it,

but my face is illegible.

Only contours, alarmed bees,

which I fed.

They said: leave her to us.

She shouldn’t gesticulate.

Uncover her face,

she should see.

She couldn’t see.

White tablecloth absorbed blood,

in the sun dazzled

fear, still fresh,

someone smiled.

Don’t close my eyes, I can’t be everywhere

identically dead. Lower me and lie

under my head my childhood photographs.

What will happen next, when they finish the psalms

and get up from the benches? I’ll stay and you go back.

I will never leave her,

she’s always been here,

she’ll always be here.

I have never thought I’ll be born.

Behind the pane of the dream sways a branch.

I will never leave her,

she’s always been here,

she’ll always be here.

I have never thought I’ll be born.

Behind the pane of the dream sways a branch.

He always took the toy

I gave him.

Your mother, she didn’t have more of you?

I ask as I did years back,

aware now

the essence of being is care.

On a camp by St. Anna’s Mountain

I have a shallow nap.

That’ll be all.

Most probably

I’ll be a little lonely

these days.

We won’t say hello,

though the dog will yap,

as if someone stood

against the light.

This can’t be confirmed.

On my naked shoulders

untied straightjacket.

I drowned my woman in my dreams,

perhaps someone’s wife; I left her in the water

observing from the bottom her arched neck

on petrified waves.

I cannot love another woman

but my own, though she divides us,

and her last word, day after day,

lumps heavier in my throat.

I drowned my woman in my dreams,

perhaps someone’s wife; I left her in the water

observing from the bottom her arched neck

on petrified waves.

I cannot love another woman

but my own, though she divides us,

and her last word, day after day,

lumps heavier in my throat.

I love looking at you,

he said. Then

he was gone.

I tried to present it

clearly, strenuously

reconstruct the cage

of consciousness.

I walked under water to make them think I was drowning.

In the water I had a dream about a child who ran

over glass, losing its fingers, hairs, nails.

It wasn’t clear how the child was entered by the light

I stood behind. My eyes were freezing when I wasn’t looking.

Then, when everyone could hear me, they wanted

to know how much it hurt. I said nothing,

I’d like to do it again.

We seep into vacancies left by our bodies,

filled with happiness that has come too early.

For this reason we will go to heaven

only to learn there’s been a mistake.

We were as free as paper people.

Back then nothing was hardening

inside us, like concrete.

Nobody was dying.

Three tickets were sold,

the performance didn’t run.

The tickets were returned.

It will ponder what it has glimpsed. With its

head between pillow and dawn, the dawn

on the playground like a bucket of sand.

Morning sky will be a plank where one can

hear the knocking of the pulse. As if a song

peeping inside could be heard.

I will go out when I’m ready.

A strapping girl, right on the pavement.

I knew that I could wash my face and hands,

leaking through the dense mesh. That I am patient,

leaning against the shore of the sea. I cannot drink.

Come, we shall look for someone inside us,

let me only turn my head.

Alive I was a daughter,

I waited for you, as I kept running

down the road cut by the town’s branches.

I’m the one to whom returns, a haemorrhage

on the brink, father’s dry cough,

during the night which died out. I had no time

to tell you that day on the bridge

when this had happened.

Though I walk away slowly,

it doesn’t mean I will manage to turn back.

Look around, I’m not here yet.

There it hurts me.

My rose out of saliva and mist,

moon – the lake’s belly button.

God thrown on the water, a mute boy.

You ask me about the punchline?

If I talked in my sleep,

I would know

what to say.

I must have seen it somewhere. Say, here,

the face like an uninhabited courtyard.

Take the sheet music of the pulse, look:

under the seams of the skin sweet pith

and blood, blood all from glass.

I’m your playground.

I’m a stain on the bed sheet.

I’m the soft sound

sifting into your headphones

– the symphony of I.

I was under the coat, in the vulgar

light torn at the elbow. Then you met me.

Day strolled on the wall till the evening

– it wanted to see more and linger,

because tomorrow it will be elsewhere.

I can be seen as long as sleep coughs with me,

until the shadow props on the body.

For a long time I haven’t written to myself.

I remember, as if it was today.

Sleep was sticky like resin, precariously

leaning out of the mouth. Then a gulp of air and

fear climbed us like a child a branch.

Do not disturb my entrance into the unfamiliar world,

I have never had a body.

I glanced at the object called ‘extreme’,

there was no exit: confront

the machine. Sensation scary as death,

garish animals of lights and fawning shadows.

I entered. The crowd danced with joy:

it was.

The same. Heaps of discarded clothes,

of time. I look at you, think of the country

where I live. It too knows us thoroughly.

Sad months approach. Loud light

runs up from behind.

To rub the wind and sun into my bones, to forget

in order to once again begin a day

– a dozen years before.

As if I didn’t have a tongue,

as if my tongue queried its identity,

as if all the above at once.