Text by Matilda Forss
The sky was grey—the wind a simple bufera infernal; nothing gleamed. A black swan ran across the water—lithe, like a leopard. Strands of forest sedge spiked up like rebellious teenage hair, disguising the edge of the lake. Two seagulls landed; they were screaming and fighting as soon as they touched water. Four mothers and five children tried to pass over the tiny bridge with newly-painted-red banisters.
Everybody moved, slowly.
The bench was smooth, and coated in bird shit.
One of the children fell off his bike.
There was a bush hiding me and him from the others. The five-year-old looked at me with horror.
His mother rounded the pittosporum, and, having missed the incident, smiled my way.
The strollers moved past my horizon, and so the upkeep, the intensity, the noise of construction, dimmed, as if someone had closed the door to a party in the other room. Only the odour of the banisters reached me.
It propelled me into summer.
It propelled me to hum; la bufera infernal, che mai non resta.
I was sixteen again and had absolutely nothing to do. Still, I didn’t want to be of service to my mother, who was constantly painting. She’d stand brushing planks deep into the night with a headlamp on. Her hand was always stroking something—if not a plank, then a morning cup of coffee, or a tired child’s cheek. The swallows would go to bed before she did.
Mai non resta, mai non resta, mai non resta.
My arms tire when I braid my own hair. I don’t drink coffee. I’ve slept through fire alarms. I cannot imagine painting the way she paints.
A gull shrieked then, demanding attention. The boy saw the way the heads turned at this and copied the cry. Everybody else moved, slowly.
