Dim Memories

I am here alone

reaching out to the sun,

which hangs on a thin thread

in the corner of the sky, swaying gently.

Nobody else knows I’m here

in this white and primordial house

made of clouds, in front of the garden

of plowed shadows.

The wind is looking for his foggy keys

to sneak through the door.

Each stone outside is a captured David,

waiting to be carved out, every bone in me

belongs to someone else who has yet to

be born, every breath I take is already

exhaled by some dying creature.

I am here alone

and slowly growing old with a smile.

The tomatoes turn red in the garden

as the face of a politician on trial,

girls with the color of sparrows cross the street

and their laughter rises up and gets lost

inside the crevices of my blue childhood.

Suicidally beautiful boys, like angels, run

over and fly away.

The rays of the sun’s octopus

penetrate the window and fill up the room

to the ceiling, the waves of time splash

and crash into the walls, a moth flies over

and disperses scents of silky old age. Life

stretches from room to room like a gold

toilet paper roll and then stops.

An old woman dressed in black,

stooped like the letter C, stands in front of

the door and whispers something to me

about my life,

which I can’t fully understand.

Peycho Kanev is the author of six poetry collections and three chapbooks. His poems have appeared in Rattle, Poetry Quarterly, The Evergreen Review, The Adirondack Review, and many other literary magazines. His latest chapbook, Under Half-Empty Heaven, was published in 2019 by Grey Book Press.