Annalise Halverson
It’s just before 2 AM. Maybe after. The sun abandoned us a long time ago. Or we just turned away from it. I stare at the starless ceiling and dream with open eyes of a café in the desert. A lone, nameless wooden structure, with lights so yellow the night sky is tinted just above. An eternal sunset, one square meter of the earth forever frozen between day and night. I used to dream of absence. Now I dream of light. The scene is radiant but streaky. As if it existed in the rainwater’s reflection of a metro stop. I’ve been here before. Tasted the stale beans in Prague and smelt the chocolately liqueurs in Paris. Sat on the lopsided oak bar stools of Oslo and admired the old yet handsome bartender of Málaga. The clouds settle close to the ground. Like a dream spun around and turned upright on its head. One that keeps time and doesn’t live in the mind but rather moves through the body in waves. Segments that fit together so well but create a distorted image. All the angles, tattooed on the grey matter of my mind. I no longer have a use for memories. Not since the sun fell below my feet. Every souvenir of yesterday on the edge of crumbling, all tucked away into photo albums and cardboard boxes on a shelf somewhere in my mind. At times I wish the images were brighter, more colorful; demanding of life. But the eternal night hangs too heavy on my eyelids. So, instead, I collage these segments into the homes of my dreams. The veins of the image vibrate in color. A spectrum dripping in rose water. Customers come and go in the boundless night. Socially distanced. On Norwegian stools drinking French wines. The image turns musty in my eyes, as if backlit by the rising sun. Its own light blends into something much brighter, larger. You’re no longer sure if you can see it, but you know it’s there.
43
