THE MISSING PIECE
There is a piece of glass in my window, that isn’t in my window. Not a whole pane empty. It is a shard, astray, almost not broken. I don’t see the bit that isn’t there. It is not my window.
I look out through the missing piece at the walled garden below. There is an unexpected walnut tree leaning in the corner all winter-wiry and ochre. Each of his grooves tells a story. Four eyes, scarred-half-open from where he late-bled, flicker with the neighbour’s humming lawn. A flat cowbell and yellow rope, bejewelling the tree, hang above an upturned wooden chair that belongs right there.
Beside the tree is a sign, planted, rusted, asking in two languages to please, stay off the lawn. The paint doesn’t hint to the trompe, that those implied to heed, wouldn’t consider why, or how, to read it. The lawn is not there.
After morning comes the man who stops at each boxed-bed, smoking clouds into still-damp air. He bends to sit, kneads the earth, and flinches on return. There is rebellion in his kind, wide, back. At the window, instead of writing, I think about September – late sunshine and picking gifts that blacken knuckles, as overgrown vegetables fill the beds, here.
BIRGITTA BELLÊME - 2024
Moulins - Engilbert