Three poems by Dina Frînculescu

HIDE-AND-SEEK

I woke up today to a world spun tight with fog

over the hills the road that we took turned into a forest

we whispered and pleaded to those green leaves

teach us where this darkness goes, how to breathe

and you were tall, handsome, dark with teeth like fox

and you were far away concealed in telephone wires.

I woke up today to my muddy boots flung by a door

everyone will see where I have been walking

they will see those dirty stars, that trampled moon

they will see those leaves that I have chewed up

and yes I have seen behind the mirror of night

ten thousand mercies, ten thousand mistakes.

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FRESH SKIN

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From inside one of the many sleepless nights of this winter, I write to you,

Please, be gentle.

This is to let you know that I am quitting my addiction to scars.

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You insist of showing me something that I have always known

Wrapped in another language,

Cursed with a new name.

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There was a crow outside the metro station today

And a tourist was taking pictures of it,

So the bird was posing like a model.

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The cat in the snow, patiently waiting to become a snowball

And our bodies, almost cold, stretched across Europe,

Not from Lisbon to Vladivostok, but from Talinn to Cluj,

Teaching our children their three mother tongues.

.

You had a room with no windows,

You had a village with no streetlights

You had a forest with no animals,

And I looked upon them and, behold, 

They were corrupt.

.

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HUSBAND

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Last night I spilled a glass of water on our bedside table

which we built one hot summer, as our cats slept. 

I was tired and pulled the blankets over myself, even as the water

soaked into the walnut finish and dripped over the carpet.

You never proposed marriage to me. 

.

We marry the way turtles or swans do, returning to one another

in every season with a different quarrel. Our honeymoon 

was a walk to a hidden creek where we sat on rusted steps 

of a water level gauge, smoked marijuana, and spied on deer.

.

Every morning you resemble more closely my husband

I can smell it in your beard, and as you wipe with blue cloths

spilled water carefully in the night. You love that table 

with the same protectiveness that my mother loved me

quietly, and with secret gestures.