Translated by Rachel Galvin
You say that insisting on this is a mistake. You always
say it. We understand that to partake of the same mistake,
to consume, to commit the same mistake, to insist,
to overtake the monotony of mistake, was our thing.
To make it a habit, to inhabit the mistake, to wake
in the morning and wash our faces, go to the kitchen,
sleep, cohabitate with the mistake, with this same
daily, imperceptible mistake. To eat our steak by mistake,
to partake of the mistake, ingest it, digest it, make it
ours, defecate it.
When you are off-key, do it twice: you will be singing.
When you stumble, do it twice: you will be dancing.
When I say you should go, I repeat it several times
because I always want you to stay.
To insist on this, you say, is a mistake, and I insist
on it, I repeat it, until it loses its meaning, until
it has a new one, gleaming, like your black shoes,
a motif, a leitmotif, to make it a style, make it a gesture,
make it ours: to make the mistake our thing.
What is distance? Our distance is not measured
in meters but in monads. Not in monads, rather in
monies. In our change. In the change. In the intention
to change. In a coin with two faces that never
meet, except when spinning in the air. Is our distance
a spinning coin or a coin fallen aslant on the table?
The disenchantment or the spinning coin? The distance
between the bed and the kitchen, the distance when we are both
in the bed, this distance is not measured in meters but in monads,
and in monies. Our distance a coin with two faces,
aslant or disenchant, our faith in the chant: our song:
the music we make or don’t make: our relationship
and its distance: our relationship and its monies: our change:
the change in our faith. Our faith consists in buying
small bags of tea with this change, buying tea as an act
of faith that the change will come: our faith in the change:
our faith in faith: our prayer or our psalm.
Our relationship is a salmon that swims upstream,
against the current, only to die after spawning. Our relationship
is a salmon that doesn’t know how to swim, and yet,
swims, upwards.
Our faith is a salmon, and yet.
Brief History of a Contemporary Romance
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