Fieldwork in trains

San Francisco-Seattle

Home objects
Have come together –

In fear, I gave birth to their knotted body
my body bellowed
A flare of being in each shout
there was an anxious kick of life in the expanding flesh
their bodies attached to mine: checking the corners
for leaks - I got new angles; looking under the bed for lost socks -
I became shelter; examining the faucets, the stove -  

The fears moved my house inside

Enclosing it into my sight, my ears
And only so we are now walking
Away, doors and plumbing
surviving entangled
In mold and upon rust  
Smells of fries and curved pipes

These embodied lines keep me in place
Fear as glue and spark inside my slanting body 
I’ve been dreaming of hills - vineyards and strawberries
A couple of dogs upon a scorched courtyard
Meandering up and down someone’s eyeball
I am to leave - strawberries dry out
To move my fears somewhere else

But breaking the entangled
apart hurts. The house will soon be stiff
– forsaken – a pile of objects arranged
again by room name
pulled from my brown eyes
still warm with fear

[June 2019]

 Note on photographs: I took all the photographs below while riding the train from San Francisco to Seattle. Source: Olimpia Mosteanu.

 

Olimpia Mosteanu