Before the Chestnut Gatherers

Image by Ania Lakritz

I’m entranced by these women successively rising from the molten earth, like a ghostly dance, ripening into the cracked chestnut in the foreground. Green spikes and autumn leaves patterned like a mimetic of a quilt, women stitched into a woven earth. Everything around it is an itching yellow fog. Eyes burning, this is all you see, oppressively quiet, late-blooming Utopia, enclosing like deep red poppies—this guy I brought here said that because opium is made from poppies they represent “the sleep of the mind.” Standing here you forget the seduction of diaphanous green silk, hovering lepidopteran above the woman reflecting sorrowfully, painting herself and her day at her toilette. Her consolation canvas. Doomed to toil aimlessly over someone else’s finished work. Now her mournful space is a dumping ground, where passersby leave cavernous questions for lines and lines of silent lips. How did I end up in this random guy’s apartment watching so many Woody Allen movies at once I want to vomit? Why am I still leaving messages to linger behind the unresponsive stars?