Spread and Illuminated

Spread and Illuminated Lena Bezawork Grönlund Spread and illuminated under my desk lamp pages of old and new letters, blue longhand staring fiercely at me where I sit in my gray swing able chair into late night hours. —How long has it been since you've been back home? The hands who wrote these lines are my mother's and father's. These words should speak to me, but there is only silence here. I never learned my native alphabet. These Amharic letters may as well be blots of ink to me, and suddenly a forceful fluid form rush, like magma, to battle those solid words. —All my life I haven't been back. As if someone poured coffee over them they are loose now in shape, dissolving into oceanic ink pooling on my floor. Up from there the words rise in petite tin forms, smiling and pointing at me. —That's a long time. [End Page 606] With my mouth first I fall gently towards a dark surface, tasting warm fluids. The rest of me rushing into a fluid form out of which I step out clean as from a shower for the first time as an Ethiopian, —Too long playing marbles in alleys of city streets in Addis Ababa, running with my siblings in between metal shacks and big hotels. Chasing cool shadow sand clouds rise in between and after us. I stop to see dust falling down like a curtain, catching breath and perceiving among people a mother and a father walking closer. Lena Bezawork Grönlund is a writer, translator, and teacher. She lives in Sweden

Ancient history · Art · Art history · Battle · Visual arts · Comparative and World Literature · Educational Leadership and Practices · History · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

• Author and Title Index to Callaloo Volume XX (Whole Numbers 110-113)

  Florence S Davies•Callaloo•2007

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