Livia Marinescu

THE COAT

I have asked people that I know or did not know before to put on this coat covered

with paper cranes and to close their eyes.

I want to look at their faces as they become or try to become calmer, at the way they

hold their hands, or grip the coat’s edges.

After they open their eyes they often tell me that it was soothing to listen to the sea

with their eyes closed, or that everything looks different afterwards.

I would like to know how it would be possible to heal someone either by mere touch,

or more specifically, by placing a piece of cloth over them, wrapping them in a coat, a

large scarf, a blanket, as all their pain and trouble goes out of them through that

surface.

I also made the coat to show how I feel about my life: sometimes it is dark. But over

this black coat, white birds come to rest, once in a while, and I find myself relieved

for a moment because of their beauty, and because in their lightness they take upon

them my burden.

Livia Marinescu 2012

I always cut off

a part of the flowers’ stems – after I bring them

home - because air bubbles go

up the stems and water cannot

reach them anymore.

And then I place them in a vase and look at them.

I make a big mistake

I hurt someone

that’s when I run out and buy white flowers.

The flowers I buy are only from supermarkets because

they are infected with neon light and thus they know so much more about flowers.

And then I like to hand the bunch

to the person behind the counter and to hear them asking me:

‘Anything else for you today?’

‘No, thank you, this is all for today.’

It has been going on for years,

choking on these air bubbles.

 

 

 

I did that again a few nights ago without meaning to.

I was very hungry in the middle of the night,

I took a lump of bread and

ate it there

in the dark

in that dark under

the blanket.

That’s when I remembered when we were small

and how we kept the bread in a plastic bag

on that wooden shelf at the end of our bed.

At night we woke up and ate by tearing from it.

We slept in the crumbs

Sheltered.

How different it feels to do this

when you understand,

when you think you understand.

 

 

 

 

 

I am a body full of cancer in a field full of flowers.

Or maybe in a supermarket of flowers. 'Sometimes I am her body, or someone else’s body who had pain living in them like in a house.'

On that day, I first wrote her name in my phone with the word ‘mother’ after it. And then I realised what had happened and I wrote her name in my phone with the word ‘mother’ before it.

the days have grown longer,

you see? it is still cold but

let us walk through

your eyes are big and so

peaceful.

such eyes as children draw when

they are

alone. when they are

left with God

blue meadows shelter our

light togetherness

we walk inside

green solitude

my fear takes the shape of a flower

it opens then closes unto

those years that passed. It is time.

I will say it

again for the last time:

I am afraid.

- - -

where will a rabbit

running over blue meadows

find its food tonight?

will the running be hunger? will the distance be food?

but your soft voice is near,

and someone else

nearer and

nearer

Have you ever noticed how water tastes

different after you cried?

When we go by car, I am stuck to the window, because I want to show you all the white horses we find on the way there. And you neither look, nor move.

I sent you a postcard with horses, and I wondered if you patted the paper.

And if you did, then I must have been here on a bus

in that very moment and a horse must have been here in the field.

A.

azi vii să mă vezi

inima ta caldă o să se urce într-un

avion mare

mai știi cum duminica, noi

mâncam șnițel de pui și eu

mă uitam la startrek

ca să aflăm data

stelară

surioară,

mi-e atât de rău înăuntru

încât aș înghiți pământ doar ca să

mă îngreunez cumva, să pot să

atârn de

ziua

asta

tu nu știi, atunci

eu mă dădeam bătută

și câștigai la jocuri, și nu știi cum

noaptea și ziua, și ziua și noaptea

citeam pe ascuns de tine ‘cuore,

inimă

de copil’

azi vii să mă vezi

și îmi ceri

să te poftesc înăuntru și

să îți pun masa dar

mie, surioară, mi-a fost așa de rău înăuntru și

inima mea nu a umblat

în dragoste și nu găsit

nimic din ce îmi ceri

pentru că aici

avionul ăla mare îmi intră

zilnic

în

inimă

At this moment: a song

I once had a loaf of bread.

I cut it in three but

the birds wouldn’t eat it.

I stood still for a year

and for a year I stood

still.

and from a distance they said:

You forgot how to bake and

you forgot how to listen.

I think about dying very often in

my everyday life. It is not the kind of thing that

you’d tell someone when you first meet them,

it would not help you

get a job or do your laundry.

It’s just one of those things that comes to you when

you change the water in the vase, or

when you’re on the bus and you see

a child and a mother:

a passenger gets on. The child

turns around

to look at them,

to follow them as they find their seat.

The child stares.

‘Turn around, turn around child, and be still.’

The only thing I've learned

in all these years is

to wait

under the water until

they forget about you.

And then just as you feel you're drowning,

- - -

you slowly start breathing through

someone else's mouth.

Livia Marinescu

This is an ongoing project. If you would like to wear the coat, please write to me at: marinescu.livia@gmail.com