The Comfort of Old Slippers

It is to know that you will come back to old slippers and to that curve in the bed that makes you wonder how it feels to run barefoot again, upon hot asphalt streets.  The sunsets you missed holding a child to your breast make your breast the color of sunsets you would like to see, there in the mountains where the air is different.  And you run your finger over the lip of the cup, while remembering that you have not touched a trembling lip since the last time you did. 

It is to fancy the smell of garlic jumping in cold pressed hot olive oil, for it makes you recall the dusty roads shaded by pine trees.  For now, it is to accept that cities of stone cannot grow a secret garden.  A city where unshaved men have a story to tell and women of no age have time to listen to stories since they lost theirs. 

And you hide in your coat, as you want to keep the name you once had given to the one who told you he would be back.  Yet, you missed the sunsets, and you missed the early morning fog on summer days.  For you did believe that he would come back. You just remained where you had left him go.

It is the blond kids of Gottingen who run in your open mind.  And the Henna upon deep eyes reminds you of a girl you knew.  The wine is stronger now because you are not as free; and it takes a Gypsy violin serenade to cloud your eyes.  And you look in those clouds, and look through them, as you did during the walk you walked in Prague, near the Danube, of the winter angry.  You wore red shoes on that day, while a proud woman tried to sell you the two heads of cabbage and four sugar beets she had harvested from the piece of land she called her garden. Yet that land was not hers, and that land was hardly larger than the scarf you were wearing, that winter day, near the Danube.  And you walked away in your red shoes.

It is now simple, and it is past already.  Your return is to a place you never left before, because you can leave only yourself behind.  Your comfort is to throw the old slippers out of the windows upon which you once hung curtains of Egyptian cotton to remind you of places you did not visit.  And you prepare a dish from a recipe your mother did not teach you.  And you eat alone.

… It is then that through the curtains you once hung that you see a sunset of pleasant colors.  A few pastel shades upon your bedroom wall, and the sun disappears behind the walls of stone where unshaved men have a story to tell.  It is then that you touch your breasts and it feels good.  The smell of golden garlic in Moroccan olive oil reminds you of the places you do not want to visit anymore.  And you approach the window, look upon the street where you threw the old slippers.

It is the joy of walking barefoot on that street that makes you smile.  And you pick up the old slippers, dust the day off of them, and walk back.  It is the comfort of that curve in the bed that brings you back.  And you smile again, because now you know you can watch another sunset tomorrow.  A sunset upon your secret garden.

December 19, 2013

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2013