There are days when the years of your life come back. They come knocking at your door in the middle of the night. Surprised - thought they'd be gone by now. After all, you did the work, the learning, the growing, the expected.
We have this word in Romanian—dor. There’s no translation, only a hint of a missing you can’t name, the kind that seeps in with the windows closed. Usually it’s quiet, but there are the days of unquiet. You are five, walking with your brother to get water from the village well. On the way, five poplars are constant, sky-chasing. My poplars. The storm has nothing on your roots. It feels safe here.
Years later, you only live in my memory, yet when these years return, you return. Memory becomes presence again, and I've really missed you. Not many trees like you around here. Maybe I've changed, maybe we were younger once. My roots have grown to a place of knowing. You knew all along.
This piece is a reflection on the places and the things we deeply loved once safely stored in an old box. Sometimes they rush back to life and leave us wordless. Life has changed, there's the rooms of our lives, there's the projects, there's the titles, but they are here too. Five or twenty five, some things remain. And somehow, we do too.
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