My heart, an anti-stress ball

A poem in Romanian and English 





My head is a well bucket

I have enough water to feed 20 thirsty camels

crossing the Sahara desert


When I was sad I would lean over the well

and I would shout loudly in my head I could hear my echo

"help me"

"help me"

By shouting in the well for years

I learned to answer my own questions

with questions


The ballerina music box is also a Sisyphus 

who has to dance on the spot the same song

Looking at herself in the mirror


As time goes by 

I learned to wear my sadness like a

loose nightgown

I am an empty cinema

(no chairs) I invite you to watch

the same scene where a child breaks the windows

and Chaplin installs them back


‘In this empty cinema

your breath in my ear is

so erotic, ‘you whispered me 


I know I am the dumb woman

haunting the trains to sell cheap things

a keychain, some playing cards

the dumb you fell in love with and has no echo

the dry fountain pen the dry well

above which, a bucket is floating menacingly

an imprecise guillotine


I leave the door ajar in case you change your mind

The chain-locked always leaves space

as if to show you the possibility of a lost freedom



When I was little, I thought my clothes and my body grew up together 

that the things around me shrink when I cry

I would have sworn my body tightened because of the tears

my wrinkly fingers in the water were the living proof of it 

my heart

an anti-stress ball that you hold in your hands

your heart

an alarm clock I keep hitting

snooze snooze






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