I keep meaning to tell Roy that I come to this cemetery a lot. Several days a week, in fact, because its center path allows me to avoid the heavy pedestrian traffic on Nørrebrogade. I think of Roy often, though, because of how much he loves Kirkegaard. And in here, about 3 meters from where I sit, lies Kirkegaard.
I’d planned to walk straight through today, but then I saw an empty bench under a large gray shade. Couldn’t resist, especially since I have a new book. Purchased it this morning with the guidance of a woman who, only yesterday, I despised. She’d chided me as a child as I thumbed through a collection of interviews. Apparently I was bending the book spine too much. “You’ll damage the book that way” she said, tapping my knuckles with her thin fingers. I was shamed. But today was a new day, she grinned while squeezing between me and the fiction section, so I asked her advice on a Norwegian author. She gave it to me, and it was good advice.
Pale yellow blotches dance around me. Its partly cloudy, completely windy. I am exhausted and want to lie down on this bench, just for a few minutes, but how can one do that in a public space without looking like a bum? I’m next to a trashbin too. Giant-sized flies and bees are darting, crashing into me constantly - no, I am not what you hope, there is no life for you here - then they buzz away. Like the little bugs that come into our flat at night and congregate on the ceiling, not moving at all, just there. It took us days to figure out what it was we had that they wanted, but now we know, its the light. We have to pull our shades down on warmer nights when the windows stay open. Otherwise, there’ll be a mess to clean up the next day, for the cloud of little creatures will have fallen dead in the dark.
The yellow patches are brighter now, glinting like crystals, and I really need to close my eyes. Maybe one of the angels out here will come and cover me as I slump into down into metal. Some look so sad and despondent, staring down at rectangles of raised earth. Others are more assertive, looking around with protective, almost seductive eyes. I want one of those. There are so many crosses too, and of course innumerable headstones. But the tree above me is definitely more like an angel. Tall and thick, its branches hang loosely and are covered in little green leaves that flutter, like the long loose garb that drapes over an angels shoulders, rippling in the wind. And the knob of wood on the tree trunk is her one exposed breast, a bit misshapen perhaps, but solid.
She is here and I am fading.
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