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Their hands were always searching for something and if you were no longer able to hold an animal or a person tenderly, it was better to let go and turn your attention to other useful things instead.
thought of him skating with red cheeks, and about the thaw that would start tomorrow: the curly-haired presenter had warned of roofs that might be too slippery for Saint Nicholas to get down the chimney, and mist which might lead him to get lost and perhaps Matthies too, even though it was his own fault. For a moment, I saw my skates before me, greased and back in their box, ready to be returned to the attic. I thought about being too small for so much, but that
no one told you when you were big enough, how many centimetres on the door-post that was, and I asked God if He please couldn’t take my brother Matthies instead of my rabbit.
We could have wrapped the string around our bodies so that they didn’t fall apart in
he had to stand still for too long, which made him dwell on things, and then he smoked more. No one in the village liked to dwell: the crops might wither, and we only knew about the harvest that came from the land, not about things that grew inside ourselves. I
breathed in Dad’s smoke so that his cares would become mine.
My sister steps to one side. She’s put her hair in a ponytail that gives her an encouraging pat on the back with every movement. I really want to pull the elastic out. I don’t want her to think that anything’s possible, that she can put on her ice skates one day and disappear.
The little stabs inside my belly get worse, as though holes are being pricked in the lining.
Dad says children can’t have worries because they only come when you have to plough and grub your own fields, even though I keep discovering more and more worries of my own and they keep me awake at night. They seem to be growing.
She felt I was good at putting myself in another’s shoes but not so great at kicking off my own and having fun.
Hanna pushed her tongue inside me as she was looking for words she didn’t possess herself.
People need small problems in order to feel bigger.
She can do that, think before she speaks; with me it’s the other way around. When I try it, my head suddenly empties out and my words are like the cows that lie down in the wrong place in the shed to sleep, where I can’t get to them.
the Second World War, resistance was always against others – now it’s only directed at ourselves, like with my coat, which is a rebellion against all the illnesses listed in the radio requests
Even though it will feel uncomfortable for a while, but according to the pastor, discomfort is good. In discomfort we are real.’
looks at the chair-back as though my brother has fallen again, always falling in our minds, again and again.
She doesn’t put me back in the solar system, but lets me float. Am I really different from the others?
away the shit flies, just like the walnut leaves. Now I picture Dad’s head hanging there instead of the space hopper.
the things I’m collecting to become heavier.
we can smell is longing and each other’s absence.
