Winter
Aleksandra Lane (IIML, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)
.
.
I do not remember. I only repeat what you or I or even the neighbours
may have said at the time. There is a door, locked, and a window with wooden
blinds shut. Inside we are not tit-for-tat, we are not trivial in a deadpan
sort of way like youth. No, we both know now we are not really there.
.
It is not winter though everything is frozen, there is a glaze over your skin
and over the grapes sitting on the table, unnoticed from the week before.
No one comes in. The skirt is short and red and then there is no skirt. No sheets
on the bed. We are not in the middle of an argument, nor an embrace.
.
It is not winter. Though I do not remember the time of day someone tells me
it is late summer. Judging by the blinds and sweat it may well be. But then again,
the heater in the corner may be going. I don’t remember. We walk out
of that room so often it ceases to exist. It all becomes just one long street
.
that walks every memory out of our view until we can honestly say no time
was ever spent here. They say there was, they say there always is: a door, a window
and a bed, even some sheets. No one would have been close enough to see,
I argue back, but no use in arguing. There are no neighbours left. It’s winter.
And then it’s spring.
.
.
Aleksandra Lane is currently completing her MA in Creative Writing at IIML (Victoria University) in Wellington. Her poems have been published in Snorkel, Side Stream and two poetry collections in Serbia, and some will appear in the New Zealand feature issue of the International Literary Quarterly.
