in passing
remember we used to be happy to see each other?
I saw you last week, you were just 20 meters away, we haven't seen each other for years, and we both looked away. What else could we have done? Last time we said sveiks - was it four, seven, ten years ago? - it was awkward, we had nothing to say to each other, we were both ashamed. You were ashamed of your hands and your clothes under my snobbish look and I was disgusted at myself for being ashamed for them too. We said our hellos, asked if things were going fine and found a way to escape the conversation.
But we used to be happy to see each other. We used to spend hours, days together, just two of us in the dark narrowness of our home, in the drunken freshness of uncle's small birch grove when collecting the watery-sweet juice drop by drop. We would come every hour to see if the big jar was full, but the trees were sparing their strength and didn't care for our impatience. I was the city girl and you were the simple boy from the country and I was a little ashamed for you first, while I still had my city clothes on. For the first few hours the memory of the hour-long trip on the bus that I managed on my own was still fresh enough to make even me more arrogant. You felt that, but you were never hostile to my arrogance. Instead, you accepted it as true and treated me like a princess. Were you the first boy to adore me?
We used to be friends when we were kids. And now you're just the tall awkward guy, rough on the edges, someone I would never even speak to if you were not my cousin's cousin and yes, a childhood friend. We used to be happy to see each other and now we don't care.
I pass you by and follow my nephew who shows me where to pick the strawberries. How could I forget? They always grew there, I used to pick them there when I was just a little older than him, I used to spend hours in this garden, playing under the old apple trees, imagining how the garden and the house looked like when there was no village around it. They left the low shelter of the dark wooden house and there was no one around, no people for miles and miles. I wondered if there ever lived a girl in this house who sang those breathtakingly sad songs that I got to hear glimpses of now and then. Did she sing them at dawn, looking over the orchard, happy to feel the coolness of dew on her bare feet, her long skirt tugged in the belt she made in the long winter hours? Did she adorn herself with a flower garland, hoping someone would pass by to save her from the solitude of her remote home, of her gloomy father and worried mother? Or was she sad to leave the loving home with a man she hardly knew, moving somewhere foreign?
Did I ever think of this girl or am imagining it now? It sounds so archetypical, did I read it somewhere? Or was this that sounds worn off how, true and pure for me fifteen years ago?
I am trying to make my past my future, I want to write about nostalgia and childhood, spend years thinking about it.
I saw you last week, you were just 20 meters away, we haven't seen each other for years, and we both looked away. What else could we have done? Last time we said sveiks - was it four, seven, ten years ago? - it was awkward, we had nothing to say to each other, we were both ashamed. You were ashamed of your hands and your clothes under my snobbish look and I was disgusted at myself for being ashamed for them too. We said our hellos, asked if things were going fine and found a way to escape the conversation.
But we used to be happy to see each other. We used to spend hours, days together, just two of us in the dark narrowness of our home, in the drunken freshness of uncle's small birch grove when collecting the watery-sweet juice drop by drop. We would come every hour to see if the big jar was full, but the trees were sparing their strength and didn't care for our impatience. I was the city girl and you were the simple boy from the country and I was a little ashamed for you first, while I still had my city clothes on. For the first few hours the memory of the hour-long trip on the bus that I managed on my own was still fresh enough to make even me more arrogant. You felt that, but you were never hostile to my arrogance. Instead, you accepted it as true and treated me like a princess. Were you the first boy to adore me?
We used to be friends when we were kids. And now you're just the tall awkward guy, rough on the edges, someone I would never even speak to if you were not my cousin's cousin and yes, a childhood friend. We used to be happy to see each other and now we don't care.
I pass you by and follow my nephew who shows me where to pick the strawberries. How could I forget? They always grew there, I used to pick them there when I was just a little older than him, I used to spend hours in this garden, playing under the old apple trees, imagining how the garden and the house looked like when there was no village around it. They left the low shelter of the dark wooden house and there was no one around, no people for miles and miles. I wondered if there ever lived a girl in this house who sang those breathtakingly sad songs that I got to hear glimpses of now and then. Did she sing them at dawn, looking over the orchard, happy to feel the coolness of dew on her bare feet, her long skirt tugged in the belt she made in the long winter hours? Did she adorn herself with a flower garland, hoping someone would pass by to save her from the solitude of her remote home, of her gloomy father and worried mother? Or was she sad to leave the loving home with a man she hardly knew, moving somewhere foreign?
Did I ever think of this girl or am imagining it now? It sounds so archetypical, did I read it somewhere? Or was this that sounds worn off how, true and pure for me fifteen years ago?
I am trying to make my past my future, I want to write about nostalgia and childhood, spend years thinking about it.