This Is It, Your

/, Blesok no. 45/This Is It, Your

This Is It, Your

This Is It, Your
Drift
Being Borned
Fear of Sugar (a sestina for Angela)
We"ll Be Meeting
A Poppy by the Rails

… only by solace
do we get over misfortune,
and only out of solace
does the weakness get born
after which misfortune follows.
–Zoran Ančevski, “Solace”

”Have you any sugar?” Angela asks me.
”In the cupboard. Brown. I’ve run out of white.”
Angela has her coffee au lait, with sugar
and milk. Sweet. Unlike me – black & bitter.
Still waiting for a change. Miracle to happen.
To finally believe that I am… better.

”How are you today?” she asks. “Any better?”
She’s curious, Angela, as always. Drives me
mad with questions, though she never happens
to mention, ever since, her disgust with white
sheets. She’s trying to forget that bitter
brief (hospital) episode. Stupid sugar…

What’s the use of lies? Don’t buy refined sugar.
What’s natural is always better.
And the truth, the truth is always bitter.
Still, that night she was quick to catch me
before I sank into that fog, that deep white
dream. Oh, how quickly these things happen!

Thing is, I don’t know how it did happen.
I was hungry for something. Truth. Not for sugar-
coated lies. But there was no one; only white
walls, the dark and a bottle of pills. I’d better
be quick, Angela will surely hate me
when she hears…
And they melted, so bitter

on my tongue. But I gulped them down. Bitter,
I gulped them in threes: 6, 66… It happened.
But why did she, then, why did Angie visit me?
What devil made her knock on my door for sugar?
Nine-nine-nine… Salty water…“You’d better
throw up! Throw up, for God’s sake!” I curse the white

phone: Go to hell, Bell! What’s worse, a strange white
bed, that’s all I remember, and something bitter
leaving me through my mouth. “You’ll soon be better,
nothing terrible, nothing bad happened.
You were lucky. They’re just giving you a sugar
infusion. Don’t worry.” Angela above me,

under her halo, all white. “Tell me. What happened?”
”Give me water,” I say, bitter. “Plain, no sugar.”
”Soon, you will get better…” Angela consoles me.

AuthorMagdalena Horvat
2018-08-21T17:23:18+00:00 November 1st, 2005|Categories: Poetry, Blesok no. 45|0 Comments