Nine years

The words of the song are those you repeat before you fall asleep, the words
you hum for somebody to sleep, to wake, to fall asleep again. Can you go in
there and what can you bring back with you? What are you longing for.

Pictures as many ways for silence. My eyes are too big for my head.
This is how it has been for long now: I count all I see and I save it:
the trace of clothes and the track of tears. A camera shutting will be like a big black case that eats us up, up.

A kiss is a compass. A house is a bone, a home is a plant. I am soil, nothing
darker, when their braids drop in my palms, they grow.

Do you know how our dead ones slightly touch each other as they float by
down the river at night? Your brother bound a rope around the crocodiles mouth and then he bound his own hands around it. When they look away, their heads
are smaller, and in the mirror, their eyes are still.

Fast like rain, slow like a face after the lightning. She saw the tree crack
from white heat and the circles of years inside broke Nine years, the hair
a delta warm from inside out and flowing. Down the head, the cheeks, the legs,
our dreams were faster than we were.

Who do I resemble the most, who resembles me?

-Sara Hallström, 2006

(Written for "Braiding 1997-2005")