Lite paus

‘Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made’ by Tracey Emin
Installation at Galleri Andreas Brändström, Stockholm 1996
Incl. 14 paintings, 78 drawings, 5 body prints, various painted and personal
items, furniture, CDs, newspapers, magazines, kitchen and food supplies

December

The air is cold
as you fumble
for your keys,
your breath
hangs low
in its cloud
of longing,
hurried
while you
open my door
to get inside
where it’s warm,
where I wait
for you to
come home.

II.

C5A1

So utterly exhausted
in this conscripted effort
to go along with it all,
but she’s since mastered
the process of falling apart
at the seams gracefully
as she tries to find it
though it has yet to exist
in the chaos of
her bedside drawer
aged and creaky
following two decades
of abusive uprooting.

Stuffed full with stuff
she now searches for
a life in the midst of
those many lives past,
a collection of strangers
not quite yet forgotten
in stories in manuscripts,
images in sketchbooks
all partial and unfinished
attesting to moments
hidden and distant
beneath the superfluous,
endless heaps of rubbish.

Doctors’ prescriptions,
instruction manuals,
and boundless volumes
unneeded and incomplete
all covered in dust
layered thick like glue
dirty mirrors, razorblades
fragments of torn photos
badly taped together
somewhere in the corner
with muted silver
harsh on prints
no longer glossy.

But gray light dim,
warm air skint,
memories remembered
become those tucked away
for the next rainy day
to come along and recall
how utterly exhausted she is
in this conscripted effort
to go along with it all,
when every time is like
digging her own hole
five flights down in
the direction of nowhere.

– Sarah Badr