1. Willow Tree

My friend’s gone mad.

She gave birth to dead children, 10 in number,

all without tongue.

Oh what beautiful copper hair he had!

I wither in the deep blue sea.

and the dawn is slowly breaking.

But it is lost now and only a memory is left

and the hollow dreams where you used to sing

for a beautiful willow tree.

Oh that willow tree! So damn green!

It makes you want to rub your eyes.

A ray of light falls upon two dry hands.

The hollow dream and the sleeping willow tree

that wakes only to serve her pleasure.

2. Delirium

I look into the deep darkness hugging the room

in an effort to discern the fleeting form of my dreams.

Slippery images like half-finished drawings

that someone drew in a rush with a barely distinguishable pencil

and left them scattered to float on imagination’s wastewater.

I fear my brain’s long, chaotic monologues

that remind me that this wasn’t the last time.

I fear the truth I will hear like a hallucination amidst the silence of loneliness.

I miss that feeling of wholesomeness I had as a child

when I would hardly take a step without my mother’s presence.

Sometimes in my sleep, I barely recall the touch of her breast upon my baby lips

and I wake up thirsty with my mouth open.

[I can touch her selfish love with my fingertips.]

A wave of electricity brings me back to the present

at the moment when my fear becomes one with my imagination and everything

seems threatening and strange.

[Time is an ardent river that flows despite silence.]

And everything turns and then stands still…

Yearning, despair…

I fear, I reminisce…

3. Agony

I talk to the shadow standing across from me.

Our voices sound electric

as they direct our labyrinthine dialogues.

There are no secrets here.

The girl who felt the pain of her childhood being turned into a wound

before she even had the chance to recognize

herself in the mirror,

and the mother who gave birth to the murderers

look at each other as if they know

the meaning of forgiveness.

But life will not take back the punishment

and the sorrow that their eyes carried is not enough

after all.

4. Inheritance

I stand at the edge of my mother’s laughter

that reminds me of her loving embrace’s warmth

but also the acidity of her ironic disapproval

for everything I failed to do in accordance with her meticulous recipes.

I balance on top of my father’s look

that fixes me with a simultaneous compassion and admiration

imposing his familiar hegemonic paternalism

that filled my childhood

with so many  nerve-wrecking, bitter moments

that remained intact in my mind until today

digging burrows of memories amidst my neurons’ synapses.

On my back I carry my parents’ past and future.

Heirloom of their unbearably selfish lives

that have made my waist sick

and the pain there has become so familiar

I almost no longer feel it.

I am the ancestor, the descendant, the successor of lost generations

of people lost in the vortex of the perpetual nuclear war of beings.

Even though I came from them I don’t belong to them.

I belong only to the world where I learn to exist in relationality,

where I become myself and other.

Nefeli Papadimitropoulou