By Joanna Bergmann
Orange peel, placed carefully next to a stack of books – a pinteresty still life. Dust floats in the warm air, visible in the beam of sunlight that breaks through the half-open shutters, and slowly settles on the window sill. In the half-darkness, a hand, a back, a stroke, a shudder. It’s still early. Tiptoes, fetch a dress, white, to match the summer day. And out, fingers touching, barely, two pairs of naked feet in soft green grass, and – no.
No, that’s not how it goes. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I prop myself up against a pillow, dressed in a set of Christmas pyjamas – it is May. A May, for that matter, that can’t decide whether it wants to be summer or not and hence keeps giving me colds. I contemplate the bare walls of my room I never bothered to decorate following my one-year excuse which, by the way, is also to blame for my plants still sitting in kitchenware on the window sill and why, realistically, they will never see a proper pot. They don’t seem to mind too much.
No, this is not pinteresty, this is no clean-girl aesthetic, this is … life? Content, a little messy, but not too much, seeing as I can’t handle uneven numbers on my laptop volume. A little dust, well yeah, I got that right, but not peacefully floating in yellow sunlight, and there are no shutters either. A stack of books on the desk, but no orange peel, just a worn-out bookmark and, yes, a used tissue.
I close my eyes again and the tissue becomes a cluster of fleecy clouds in the dawning pink morning sky. Soft light dances on the little pond and water striders flit across the calm surface, already busy in these early hours. I crouch down and the surface ruffles beneath my touch, little rings shyly running away where I disturbed the sleeping water. I straighten back up, stretching my arms up high towards the sky, and take a deep breath, inhaling the smell of the woods, and the grass, and the earth, and you. I half turn and you give me a small smile, and then I run – as fast into the water as I can, before I topple and it swallows me, enshrouding me in a wet and tender embrace.
I open my eyes and smile back at you.