Annie Smith Traducción: Andrea Alzati Afternoon Nap

AFTERNOON NAP

I fall into sleep with a vengeance these days dropping jellyboned right where I am. A child come home from the beach. Openmouthed, vacated. Suddenly, violently, simply not there.

Later, the waking is heavy, a struggle back. It seems that more of us die at four in the morning than any other hour of the day. It may be too hard to come back from wherever it is that we go. To fit back into bodies too tight as though shrunk in the dryer.

It might be a comfort to leave, not make the effort, turn around, just keep going, dreamless, liquid. I’m not sure though. Being in this body longer, has stolen the power from concepts and transferred it into my bones. To the mud of my being, the sliding and slipping of muscle on muscle, the clench of my toes in the sand. Addictive: these two silver spoons by my plate, the sweet curved forms of bananas, this hard blue glass that I hold with two hands, the pure fact of touch in my life. In the grit and gristle of aging I hunger for peach juice thick on my tongue, warm silken bread dough, a scented orange mango. I blindly reach out now. Touching! Naming! Greedy? Learning the Braille my skin teaches, this purple language of flesh.

—Annie Smith