STELLA NIKOLOUDI

Paper Heart

Paper heart, my totally white reason for my belonging to the snow
Repeat to me most carefully what is to be on season.
Tell me why, though I loath to freeze, I feel that cold is healthy.
It makes a house more valuable and warmth a cause wealthy.
Tell me why the winter judged the arrogance of reason,
Why haughty summers do deny their freshness to the sick and exhausted,
Why a little orchard must stay alone to resist with its own forces the aggression
Of the heat, hitting its trees, burning its crop, leaving the fruit alone and tasteless
In the basket of the winter heat so different than the warmth
One feels when touching the temperature of a friend in an old times handshake.
For we are alone with our winter friends, the one which was made out of years
of cold perception of the heat disasters on our lonely screens, when death was
equal to a minute’s follow up in front of a receiver, suggesting news but to the
eyes so abused by the voice of indifference. Now that my paper heart is in your
hands not beating but explaining the snow, what is the heart of water, I ask
myself what is a lonely winter. Well it’s a winter where the white is fascinating.
Still you are alone in a hotel and the hotel room is gloomy though luxurious,
still a terrible buzz makes sleep impossible. So you decide to go into the white,
go out in the middle of the night, just to find a place to stay. But the night is long,
and there is no place to stay. Your feet are freezing. Your hands are aching. You
are at loss in an aesthetic white hell and the only thing you wish is to have your
mother beside you for just to make the winter seasonable and your life
reasonable. You need the right shoes she would say and take a better care of
yourself. And this memory makes already things better. Because the memory of
love decides upon the mildness of the winter, and the memories of a paper heart
make the white restless. We do not have much time perhaps, but we have
ourselves, thinking every minute we spend our time or our money as if our
whole body tries to adapt to the necessities of life thinking of every minute as a
grant of God to be renewed with an accomplished truth collected like a rare fruit
out of a winter garden. Thus we belong to truth and know that it’s fair to be fed,
fair to be looked after, proud that we have survived in our loneliness
in the repeated absence of the body love so different than the word it takes.
Alone with heart and feelings included in the paper which always stays behind. I
can hear your heart beating and I think of you my friend. The time becomes us.

Stella Nikoloudi