Photo: “Przystań” by magro_kr, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
There’s a Dubliner in every town,
an Irish pub where a story finds you if you roam enough —
all day, for what feels like forever,
lost in jealousy and overthinking.
Or you can live it, never writing a thing.
You never know where it’ll take you —
that’s the beauty of literature,
the chaos of life.
No woman is fit to be a philosopher, though.
I sat on the summer veranda
in the middle of winter,
with coffee, a retro packet of milk, a round
dark chocolate bar on the saucer.
Talked —
with an artist — I don’t remember his name,
he showed me his paintings on an iPad.
With Tyler — I never went to his party,
scared of something.
He sent me a friend request, I never accepted.
With Emil — who ordered mulled wine and mint tea
when I couldn’t decide what I wanted.
He invited me to a gig, introduced his brother, called him a dumbass.
Of course, I never went anywhere.
With Giorgio — who told me he’d never been married
because it doesn’t promise joy.
I’d leave the pub and head to the port,
sit on a bench, watching a three-masted ship.
Then I’d return, since I had nowhere else to go.
I met a woman there who told me she was traveling, happy.
“Same here,” I told her.
“Don’t think so,” she said.
“My friend broke my heart,” I confessed.
Everything about that sentence was wrong.
But it was the only thing I could say in her language,
or maybe the only way I could explain.
That day felt like forever; I’ve already said that.
“When?” Giorgio asked, placing my hand on his neck,
the only thing he knew in my language.
“Never,” I answered, then laughed.
Elena Shakhnovsky is a writer and poet, living Hemingway’s dream. Her work has appeared in The Manifest Station, Quotidian Bagatelle, Heliosparrow Poetry Journal, dadakuku, and elsewhere.