Bottles

I buried bottles in the ground when others threw them in the sea

I did so not in the hope to be found

– I was there to be methodically forgotten –

but in that they not be found by anybody else but me

– I remember the pounding of my heart when

my dirty nails were inspected by suspecting wardens –

– their message untouched, raw, like an overexposed polaroid

– the picture blurred for many while it would be so clear to me –

– so clear to me –

– like a knifestab to the side, a noose tightening my throat with emotion –

I filled bottles with words of hope, pain, love and betrayal

– while others emptied them for these very same reasons –

– all things began in Monemvasia –

the attachment to the ground, the attachment to the sea

– where I learnt that feelings could be stored in a bottle

only to be opened much, much later, even though

happiness and freedom may acquire a corked taint if left to sit for too long

– I – like these bottles – was a body with minimal supplies of air –

but buried over the ground – they thought gagging me would suffice –

– they should rather have tied my hands to have dumbed me altogether –

– these hands wrought more good because they could have been tied –

– this heart felt more love because it had been spurned –

– these lungs breathed more freely because they were constrained –

I buried bottles the way some bury their dead

– confined them to repose in the bosom of mother earth –

– keeping in those discarded shards on which I honed my music –

– like some would whet their knives –

– and suddenly, on the boat back from a beast of a place –

– a particular bottle – upon remembering what was in it –

weighted more and more heavily as the memory unfolded

– much like the weight of a coffin burying into your shoulder

walking from the hearse to the hole in the ground –

– the body inside so young, so frail, yet so heavy every step hurts –

– dark vessels in the sombre night of life and death –

– I somehow knew that these bottles would acquire a meaning –

– the same way a shooting stars gathers impetus –

– the same way dandelion gather momentum in the meltemi –

– when, back at my desk, they would conjure up vivid images –

– of gut-wrenching childness – of utter loneliness – of unconditional love –

– all from a handful of sand, stolen paper and a piece of burnt wood –