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happy by. lavínia vianini

Olive green is all I see

But, then, maybe yellow too

Locked in my secret red pillbox

There they were:

encapsulated

Happiness

I could almost taste them

Salty as the sea

Reaching for them with

trembling fingers


In my head it lies a pendulum

It bounces unadvised

Infuriatingly waking everyone who dares to stand on its way

Sometimes, in the middle of the quiet evening,

I can hear it coming

And so I drag myself under the covers

As if they would

save me

save me

They wouldn’t

They couldn’t

But neither could I


And so I stand still

Stupidly hoping it would go away


Within my eyes it lies an ocean

I have been seeing it more frequently now

Unlike the pendulum, it is not

Infuriating

It is calm

bitter


I lie in bed when it comes

hold a pillow as if it were a small animal

the ocean brings me

nothingness,

melatonin,

blue.

All I ever see is blue.



 


I’m Lavínia, 25, poet, translator and teacher. I graduated in English/Portuguese, having studied and researched poetry written by women through all my years of university, which later allowed me to get a scholarship in comparative literature. Falling in love with reading was perhaps a way out of the limiting surroundings that confined me, writing, on the other hand, only came much later, as an urge that I wasn’t aware was as latent as it is.


Painting by. Douglas Harvey

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