Shake up a memory milkshake, fish out tiny chocolate hearts, caramel shells, and butterfly-shaped cookies from the thick mixture, crunch the gathered set, and wash it down with whatever remains in the glass.
It was an island. Where? When? I heard the word Cyprus. I don’t know if it was Cyprus. I’ve never been to Cyprus.
A huge mountain rose above the surface. Sandy-golden. At the top, a weathered old castle loomed, the same golden sand color. Looking down was blindingly painful. Blue, turquoise, sky blue… And endless expanses of water.
The warm sand wrapped around my feet. I walked along the shore, picking up shells of mad beauty — huge, shimmering with every color of the rainbow. Impossible. I found big, round rapana shells and small, flat ones with living mollusks inside. The mollusks were alive, and their shells gleamed under the sun with opalescent mother-of-pearl. This beauty was overwhelming; there were so many of them that I didn’t have enough hands to carry even the empty ones. Mother-of-pearl, mother-of-pearl everywhere. Beauty, the sea, the island mountain, the greenery of gardens, the freshness of the sea breeze.
My December is mesmerizing. I feel like I’m in a fairy tale. I still haven’t realized it fully. It’s as if it’s not happening to me.
V. says that it isn’t happening to me anyway.
Wait, wait… But it is me walking barefoot on the earth.
Two steps from home — and I found at least three plants in the courtyard forest that I could pluck right now, plant into the soil — and they would sprout on my balcony.