Trafika Europe 5 - Slovenian Interlude

Short of breath

To walk again in time of illness, short of breath. The moment I open the door the landscape pours in. Green and rust-coloured, the criss-crossing thuja branches bend under the snow’s weight, disarrayed. Behind there’s a statue wrapped

in black plastic foil, such as they use for covering the dead after an accident.

Every surface is wet and glossy. Beneath my feet, a sleigh’s silver trace. I tread in thin salt-stained shoes, a foreigner in a much too tidy landscape lying halfway between the Ukrainian plains and the German forests that bear monsters. An icy wind blows through my overcoat and shakes the trees. The pond is waiting for winter’s first ice. In one or two nights it will be swelling from the banks inwards. All this, like fever, might be meant merely to remind me of something. There grows imperceptibly, as the tumours kept growing in me, lurking desire that suddenly wipes distances away.

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