Not like frosted breath
And another regrettable thing is how memories vanish,
Just gone – and not in a poetic way like how,
when you were ten,
Your frosted breath would meld into the milky air
on those winter mornings outside of school-
No, not like that at all.
More like how your daddy would drive away
leaving you alone,
The blood orange taillights consumed by mist,
The painful sound of other children at your back.
The only difference being,
That after eight hours he doesn’t return,
And that while you’re sitting on the curb of the road
with the school closed
Behind you and your rucksack perched on your lap,
You start to forget.
First, the reason for your waiting,
And then, that you were waiting at all.
for I also am a sentimentalist
When tired, elephants throw grass.
They rip the shards out from the soil and toss up the grass,
The grass speeds up into the dry sky,
And floats back down to earth swooningly,
Because of gravity and because of aerodynamics.
You could say it looks like praying,
But it’s not,
It’s a distraction curing the illness of loss.
Now that you’ve left to study words and pictures,
In a country you’ve only visited twice,
I too throw grass over my back and into the air,
I as well float back down and get headaches,
Because of my liver and because of dehydration.
They could say it looks like lots of fun,
And it is,
It’s a distraction curing the illness of loss.
These birds spend only a few minutes searching for their
nests.
They fly all around, up and down and high and low,
The tall memories of their homes and their eggs faintly fading away,
While at the stretched out trunk,
A vertical void gapes and screams.
I could say it’s very sad,
But I don’t know,
For I also am a sentimentalist.
Isaiah Michalski is an aspiring writer and director from Berlin, Germany. He acts professionally in theatre and film (Anonymous, Closer To The Moon, The Physician). His political satire ‘Into The Haystack’ enjoyed a three day run at the English Theatre Berlin. In 2015 he co-founded a platform for young people from all over the world to present and practice writing in the English language (www.theyoungauthors.com). He is planning to start a BA in English Literature at a British university in 2017.