Happiness Places
Herbert Aniko’s series “Happiness Places” is an intriguing outtake from the present.
I forget that you exist. Your body in decay, your smell. I want to forget you. I dig you up from the shell of my used and spent objects. Package. I hide you for weeks like an ill-coded message. In the present it isn’t worth a thing. It should be left behind. Erased. Absolved from the mistakes that you were looking for in me. Since it was me who ate you into such a thickness. My fat, my sin, my flesh, my skin. I want to be blind to you. Evading the grave I’ll bury you in. Not going there to atone. Not collecting the features from your face like water into the palms of my hand. I tear you open like a bruise. And then I do not think. I just start all over again. Like an ordinary murderer killing himself. Paper, box, and plastic knife.
Phantasm of the night. Shedding our house my exposed backbone would look like this. I reach beyond the park, people’s backs, the things that are far and the things that are close. I am going to die. The arms of giants are stronger; they cut me out of winter. And that tiny gap will go up in flames. I left pieces of myself for you. A little warmth, from fear.
I saw you falling. With your other wing in another city. There the ground was closer too. They promised that freedom will satiate me. Emptiness is the triumph of the hungry. Stuffed nothingness. Image of foil. And I see you decomposing. As the fluff rots away and the coal cools into thick blood. The city wears you out. Nobody buries after execution. Another grey one, it could be you. Shitting all over the Milky Way and pecking star-wounds from the iron. The concrete is black like a background with scratches. You freeze and they unknown photograph you. You still will see me fall asleep. You close my deceptive eyes that were hungrier than you. I am silent. Above the smudge which is concrete-blue. Vanishing imprint.
This moon, drain of the dead. Cratered. I fly deep so that we can meet. Satellite pictures, orbiting stillness. You are a piece of them. Small and round like the sphere around an unborn baby. I will arrive at night so that you have enough time to forget having seen me. The sky is varicellous. I keep scratching it till it gets bloody. What happens when it grows up? Deep wrinkles all over, one-time outlines. Inexpungeable scabs.
