Poem: On Friendship!

By Arian Galdini

In a small village,

where snow whitened

not only the stones

but the silence of people,

the wind crossed the threshold

without knocking.

The houses sat low.

Smoke rose slowly,

as if it did not want

to burden the sky.

Dogs stayed by the gates

with lowered heads,

and over the white roofs

time seemed to have laid its hand,

not to punish,

but to ask

how much a man can still bear

when the place inside him gives way

where he had learned to lean.

I was there.

More exactly,

my body had remained there.

Sometimes a man does not leave the world.

The world leaves him,

and the things that once knew him

stand around him

like witnesses without mouths.

The table was there.

The stool was there.

The windowpane held

a thin winter breath.

In the corner, the stove kept a little fire,

not enough to warm the room,

only enough

to keep it from turning wholly into stone.

I did not want to speak.

I did not want to be asked

what was wrong.

I did not want kind words.

In the hour of breaking,

even kind words

can sound like empty bowls.

I wanted only

that no one should fall any further inside me.

That was all.

There are falls

that make no sound.

Inside a man fall

the bread he ate in trust,

the faces that once called his name,

the prayers no one has heard,

the names kept under the tongue

like a small ember

for colder days.

And when these fall,

no glass breaks.

The earth does not open.

Only the hand remains on the knee

and no longer knows

where to rest.

Then he came in.

Not in haste.

Not as one who had come

to bring me back to life.

He opened the door slowly,

shook the snow from his shoes,

closed it behind him

without letting the wood complain,

and stood for a moment

as if asking the room

where he might stay

without taking my breath.

He did not embrace me.

He did not say, endure.

He did not say, it will pass.

He drew a stool nearer,

but not too near.

Then he took the bread

left on the table,

turned its soft side toward me,

pushed the knife farther away

so it would not stand between us,

and sat down.

That was all he did.

But the room changed.

Not as night changes

when a light is turned on.

More slowly.

More deeply.

As a body changes

when it knows

it has not yet been left

entirely to darkness.

He did not save me.

Salvation is too high a word

for a human hand

on a winter evening.

He did something harder.

He became room.

Not shelter that shuts you in.

Not light that shames you.

Not an arm that takes possession of you

when you have no strength

to resist.

Room.

Enough for the soul

not to spill completely

through the cracks of the room.

Enough for pain

not to remain the only thing with a name.

Enough for me to stay there,

unexplained,

but not erased.

His silence was not emptiness.

It was a dwelling.

One could enter it

without being forced to be strong.

One could remain

without adorning the wound.

One could breathe

without asking forgiveness

for the heaviness of one’s breath.

Outside, the snow went on.

On the window, the vapor thickened.

In the stove, a log split slowly

and gave a small sound,

as something splits inside a man

when it no longer has the strength

to break aloud.

He heard it,

but did not raise his head.

He did not take my pain

as a chance to be good.

He did not touch the wound

to prove the gentleness of his own hand.

He did not turn my silence

into a stair for his soul.

He stayed near enough

for me not to be alone,

and far enough

not to take my soul’s place.

Then I stopped thinking.

I listened only to the snow.

The logs in the stove.

His quiet breath

across from my heavy one.

The knife, moved a little farther away.

The bread, its soft side turned toward me.

In that room

nothing was healed.

But nothing was left

entirely alone.

Later, he rose,

added a log to the stove,

came back,

and left the door slightly open.

Not so that anyone might enter.

So the room would not forget

there was still a way out.

I did not thank him.

There is a gratitude

that must stay voiceless

for a whole night,

so it will not become smaller

than what has happened.

He knew.

He stayed until late.

Until the snow outside grew whiter

than the evening.

Until the road lost all trace of feet.

Until the village gathered into itself

like an old man

who does not want to tell anyone

he is cold.

At some point, he rose.

He did not say he would return.

He did not promise.

He left me no word

to hold like a staff.

He looked only at the threshold,

then at the stools,

then at the bread on the table.

And before he went out,

he moved his stool a little closer

to the place where I had been sitting.

Not closer to me.

Closer to the place

where I had fallen.

Sometimes it is a stool

left where you could not remain alone.

Sometimes it is the bread

turned toward its soft side.

The knife

pushed farther away.

The door

not fully closed.

A man

who does not use your darkness

in order to appear as light.

He went out.

The wind crossed the threshold again,

but now it no longer seemed

to be entering an abandoned house.

On the windowpane

our mingled breath remained,

mine heavy,

his quiet.

After a while,

both disappeared.

But for a moment

they had been true enough

to bear witness

that a man was not alone.

Outside, the snow had covered

the traces of his coming.

Inside, the stool was still there.

He did not bring light.

He did not need to.

He left the stool.

And in that stool,

even after he had gone,

something remained awake

beside the place

where I had not been able

to stand.

Arian Galdini