A PALE YELLOW SUN

Winter's gentler now, a pale yellow sun. Or perhaps it is me that has lightened.

One Saturday morning when nonetheless the words only want to come out jagged

between us, I get dressed hastily and step out without aim, the others go swimming. 

It has taken me an unreasonably long time to learn that this is okay.

That it's okay, generous on both of us even, to make space for ourselves.

Or really, - for me to take up more space. 

It surprises me that I've not learnt this manoeuvre earlier in life,

that my persistence to instantly dig inwards and the illusion that it preferably

should take place right where I stand, could persevere for so long.

Of course, I've walked out, left for a while before in my life.

But now it's enough that I do it just for myself.

I've next only passed the blue enamel sign on our block that tells the fact

that Churchill went to preparatory school for a while in this building

before my jagged edges start to soften. It strikes me, as more often lately,

the question if it's 'the good girl' who's blinded me up until now.

The thought startles me.

She has been severed if not from me, then at least inside of me, the good girl.
No longer at my very forefront forever ready to say yes before
knowing what it is I actually want. She's more of a
distorted image of myself now, reflected only close by. Perhaps no one else
even knows, so little we do about each other's inner life after all.
Admittedly, I feel ashamed about how late I came to understand,
a stinging sensation at the heart of me now, too; in sharing it.

I've been so wild and so tame at the same time. Always.
But in the wildness, there was always a closeness, the way truth feels,
while in the tame always a displacement, as with something
arranged by someone else.

Perhaps no one else even knows, but I see things differently now.
Inside the minimal café I settle for, some ten people are crowding,
leaning in on their own and different choices of coffee.
Right next to me is a group of women in their fifties, straight from a
yoga session judging by the rolled up mats and their relaxed demeanour.

I look up, and one of them is looking straight at me,
the knitted green jumper she's wearing makes her eyes gleam in jade.
Her head is slightly tilted, and she's smiling mildly. I hold her gaze and she mine.
'We Should All Be Feminists', an essay by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
lay on my table. I know that she's seen it. I can sense it.
The distorted reflection of me flashes by, echoes along the lines of
we've just exposed something here. Inside of me the wild and
the tame meet and neither averts their eyes.

I smile back at the woman and all the way into my core.
Then I have to turn away, face the street, blink away tears against
the naked tree branches outside the foggy window and skies.
All that which is never spoken. The experiences of the jade woman's life. Those of mine.
The big things in the small moments. It moves me so much I vibrate.
Where nothing ever is arranged but only near.

I collect my things, pay for the coffee and step out into the street.
And over all of it shines a pale yellow sun. Late to wake.
There's a sorrow in that, but also, now, a solidness.

≠

the 1st photograph is one of lina lindholm taken for makers and muse

the 2nd and the last are self-portraits and the rest of it is props in a mess with,

among other things, some 'calling cards' from the lemholt n' bergman
hand tinted series of old portraits - FAMILIES - found in our pop up art shop