Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

stoneage

my first escape attempt in neuendorf. the horrible loneliness of that landscape in autumn, mixed with my own. silvia is seven years old. runs on the gray country road. wetness penetrates the shoes. the blue, cotton windbreaker offers no protection. i leave the village behind me, the cold, stiff mask of my foster mother. how i fear her. thirty kilometers from neuendorf the great, black field. silvia hides crawling among the wet furrows, cries. a farmhand carries silvia to the near farmhouse. there is a great, round mother and milk and cake. “poor little one, you are totally frozen.” rough, warm hands dry silvia’s body. silvia does not want to go home. a strange drive in the jeep. rain and fog. silvia hides beneath the rubber coat of the foster father. he carries the widebrimmed hat he brought along from idaho. at home the foster mother waits. she breaks into my safe space like a wolf. i duck. how i hate her. i hate her with the heart of a dog beaten raw. and still i have always sought the responsibility for her lovelessness within me. i have carried around this responsibility with me, later in the detention halls, in the institutes, in prison. in the end, they all are right, i am the one, the evil one, the ugly, destructive silvia, i have no right to live.

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