On closing the door
The moment when the last guests leave the flat is a special moment. You are then left alone. For a moment, the sweet aftertaste of the last smile, gesture, look echoes in your mouth. You are still wrapped in an airy web of mutual understanding, of shared presence. You walk slowly into the kitchen, sweeping your gaze over the conflagration of plates and empty bottles. A smile of leniency forms at the corner of your mouth, a small joy that this place was so alive a moment ago, full of untold stories, so many questions and experiences that have remained a delightful mystery. So you turn behind you, a step, two, three, walk into the room. And suddenly the first spark of loneliness pierces you. Warm light, muted colours, maybe music in the background. And only a trace of people, gone like an eraser-wiped sketch, like a film taken out of the camera into the sun, nothing, null, zero. The body recoils with weakness, a strange tingling, suspended over the vanishing experience of intimacy. Spider threads are torn, lost, everything disappears at an alarming rate. What is left is a world of objects, cold, alien. Surrendering to actions, each of them alien, superfluous, forced. A chair, a sofa, a desk, a light. One has to clean up tomorrow. Things need to be done. One has to buy something to eat. Heavy, so terribly heavy and empty.
11.III.12, Ochota; transl. from Polish: 12.I.23, Brzeźno