She looked like Elin to me.
It was the way she held her past
tightly like an old purse against her chest,
a swaddled, silent thing.

It was the lines beneath her eyes
that were not merely lines,
but fissures.

Through them,
I saw memories of wars not yet declared
and peaces long broken.

There were reminiscences
of Vikings beaching their longships
in suburban cul-de-sacs
and fascists parading in the muted glow
of television screens.

It was Elin, I was sure,
but an Elin composed of all the ages,
her face a palimpsest of every yesterday.

The bus groaned, sleepily carrying us
through a Växjö swaddled in a woolly, grey fog,
a fog of arrivals and departures
where time bled at the edges.

I blinked, and the seat was empty.
Not just empty, but layered
with a profound, settling dust.

She had not stepped off,
but had simply unravelled,
her form dissolving back into the mist of yesterdays
from which she’d briefly emerged,
leaving only the ghost
of her sorrow pressed into the air.

My fingers are aching again, Carla,
deep throb that travels all the way to my soul.

It’s an old soul, Carla,
and a very tired one.

The pain is a dull echo
of decades spent without rest.
I look at my hands,
knuckles swollen, skin thin
and see the map of every year
I’ve pushed through.

I need to rest. I need to sleep, Carla.
Not the fitful, shallow kind,
but a true, deep slumber
that has evaded me
for what feels like an eternity.

Every fiber of my being,
from the tips of my aching fingers
to the core of my existence,
simply yearns for stillness.

I am so tired, Carla.
My soul is in pain,
and I just need to sleep.

The world can leave now, Carla
I have waited long enough for this solace.

I tried to call you,
but my voice snagged on the empty air.
You were already a silhouette
against the bruised plum of the morning sky,
your form dissolving from the woman I knew
into something else entirely.

Your shoulders softened,
your outline blurred,
you became a bat.
A leathery parchment of a creature
unfurling into the dawn.

They say bats are blind,
but you flew with a terrible purpose,
away from me,
into the liquid gold of the rising sun.

As you receded,
you began to moult.
Not feathers, not fur,
fragments of our life.
Shreds of forgotten promises fluttered down
like black confetti.

A whispered “forever” caught
in the spider’s web by the window.
The memory of your hand in mine
landed softly on my cheek
before dissolving into mist.

You left a constellation of our ruin
in your wake,
a trail of lies and impossible hope
settling on the dewy grass,
the fence posts,
the skin of my outstretched arms.

I stood alone in the waking world,
collecting the beautiful,
useless relics of your departure,
each one a perfect, painful proof
that you were never really there at all.

Used to be a teacher, a math educator,
numbers his endless stream
watering endless minds.

And on the side he was a philosopher,
a waterfall of ideas,
a flow of inspiration to everlasting adolescence.

And that was his legacy.

Now, he sits in the humming fluorescence
of a vast discount warehouse,
his sole task to count the shoppers.

Not their purchases, but their souls.

The automatic door whispers open and shut,
a mechanical lung.
Each person a number
incrementing his silent, internal tally.

He sees the equations of their weariness
in the slump of their shoulders,
the calculus of want in their grasping hands.

The numbers are no longer abstract,
but a hyper-real catalogue of despair.
His philosophy has condensed into a single,
repeating thought.

Every life reduces to a final sum,
and his own is approaching a negative integer
under sterile,
unblinking lights.

The look in his eyes was one of oblivion,
somebody wanting to forget sins and debts,
somebody that let the rain inside his soul.

He sat in the corner booth of the cafe,
tracing the rim of a cold coffee cup.
Each passing headlight on the wet street was a fleeting ghost.

He’d left the notebook open on the table,
the words screaming in blue.

The phone had stopped ringing days ago.
Now, there was only the rhythmic tap of rain against the window,
a sound that had seeped into his very core,
washing away the anger, the fear,
leaving only a hollow, quiet chill.

He wasn’t waiting for a miracle or a reprieve.
He was just waiting for the words to become complete,
for the water to finally erase the man he had been,
leaving no trace behind.

The air in the port is always thick,
salt and the smell of rotting fish
and that’s where I saw him,
a silhouette against the flickering neon
of a distant bar.

A jolt of recognition,
cold and sharp, went through me.
His face was worn,
etched with lines
the sea carves into men,
but the eyes were the same.

We had met before,
on a different continent,
under a blistering sun.
It was a transaction,
brief and silent,
that had left me with a small fortune
and a permanent chill.

I froze, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs.
To speak would be to acknowledge the shared,
dangerous past.

To run would be an admission of guilt.
So I just stood, trapped in the gloom.
His gaze held mine, not with threat,
but with a weary understanding.

He saw the memory flash in my eyes,
saw the fear.
Slowly, deliberately,
he gave a single, grave nod.
No smile. No words.

It was a confirmation,
a dismissal all at once.
He knew.
And in that silent exchange,
I knew he would keep the secret,
just as I would keep his.

We turned away from each other,
two ghosts swallowed again by the dark.

It had been so long since I last saw her,
and there she was,
tall and thin as ever,
slightly hunched
and very drunk.

Queen Britta in all her glory,
draped in a thick woolen gray dress,
despite the August heat,
a yellow rain jacket atop it
like a crown.

She glanced at me,
then swayed past like the wind.
“Hey, Britta!” I called,
but she pretended not to hear,
muttering to herself as she stumbled away.

That was the last time I saw her.
The last time anyone saw her
until the night the coroner examined her body.

The road is long, the night is deep,
the beasts are howlin’, the seraphs sleep.
The wind is whistlin’, a mournful tune,
beneath the pale and distant moon.
The lonely traveller, weary and worn,
pursues a path that’s never been born.

The stars ignite, a diamond dust,
but shadows linger, cold and just.
The river flows, a silver thread,
where dreams and memories lie dead.
The owl calls out, a mournful sound,
on this forsaken, haunted ground.

The fire flickers, low and dim,
a flicker of hope, a flickering hymn.
The guitar strums, a lonely plea,
for solace in this misery.
But the echoes fade, and the silence grows,
as the weary soul finds no repose.

The dawn approaches, a pale gray light,
but the darkness lingers, holding tight.
The road unwinds, an endless maze,
in this twilight of forgotten days.
And the traveller walks, with weary tread,
towards a future, yet unsaid.

The wind, a mad dog, howls its grief,
through alleys choked with greasy rain,
and I, with him, find no relief,
from this soul-gnawing, endless pain.

Life, a grotesque, drunken brawl,
where laughter dies and spirits fall.

The moon, a skull, hangs pale and thin,
above the rooftops, cold and stark,
while shadows dance in a macabre din,
and shadows lengthen in the dark.

Love, a fragile, flickering spark,
extinguished by the cruelest mark.

The sea, a monster, roars and raves,
against the cliffs, a raging beast,
and death, a gaping, hungry grave,
awaits us all, at least, at least.

Hope, a whisper, barely heard,
a fragile bird, by sorrow stirred.

But still we cling, to life’s frail thread,
to memories, sweet and bittersweet,
though joy, like fallen leaves, lies dead,
and shadows lengthen, cold and fleet.

And in the silence, we can hear,
the whispers of a dying year.

The streets are howlin’ with a ghostly call,
shadows whisper where the rain does fall.
A jukebox plays a tune so thin,
beneath the weight of a world caved in.
The moon’s a liar, the stars don’t care,
and the wind just moans like a broken prayer.

The preacher’s gone, the church is bare,
empty pews and a hollow air.
The bottle’s dry, the glass is cracked,
memories fade, but the pain stays stacked.
The clock ticks loud, but time stands still,
a frozen river, a bitter pill.

The carnival’s gone, but the clowns remain,
their painted smiles masking the pain.
The Ferris wheel creaks, the lights grow dim,
a circus of sorrow on a razor’s rim.
The crowd moves on, but the echoes stay,
a requiem hums for the price we pay.

The road is long, the night is deep,
the wolves are howlin’, the angels sleep.
A guitar strums in a dusty room,
a melody born from the edge of doom.
The fight goes on, though the hands are raw,
life’s a drunken brawl, with no final law.