(Image: Oil on canvas, Gabriela Premat-Wainer 1995
h: 145cm x w: 135cm)
To Gabriela, on our 45Th anniversary, with more love that it is reasonable to expect to fit inside a person.
Every single day I think I can’t love you more. That love takes space, and that I have my fill. And every morning I prove myself wrong, even if I do not know where I put it.
Alioscha
30 of May, 2026
A quick look around told me
that, once again,
I was lost.
Lost inside her work
as, every now and then, I would.
I locked onto a single line
– a strong, assertive black line
That drew all eyes to itself,
defining the entire canvas.
It wasn’t a way out
but it was a way in…
I headed over,
mindful of the garden beds,
the teacups,
the easel.
Careful not to dislodge a memory
– especially not one of me!
(Suicide!)
Yes, there are others
I would gladly push away,
but who can tell old memories apart?
* * *
When I finally reached the line
I could see her neck and shoulder
right below the empty space
it created.
I could faintly smell her flesh
beneath the scents,
of oil and turpentine,
dormant for over 30 years.
I traced it with my finger
lingering on the swell of her shoulder
the cliff that leads to her arm
to the soft skin
on the inside of her elbow
and to the brush in her hand,
which is the road back to the line.
She turned around in her sleep and,
very softly,
placed her hand on my face,
like a bridge
that I could use to escape
or to return.
So, I stayed
although I was no longer lost
* * *
I jumped over a large cat
and headed westward,
toward the landscape of flesh
that adorned the occidental end
of the great plaza
There, among all the places
that mattered
– the ones she loved
and the ones that made her,
were scattered parts
I chose to recognize as mine
I examined closely
what could have been a shoulder
or a leg
or the physical representation
of a fleeting moment of happiness
to be found only
in the confluence of love and lust
And I felt my parts
calling to their images
And I thought that maybe,
this was not just a part of her and me,
but the best part.
The essence
The part we cannot lose
without forgetting ourselves
I felt it coming to me
not like photons
reflected by the canvas
but as tendrils of light
joining us as arms
in a sinful
and permanent embrace
* * *
Light changed as
the evening arrived and departed.
The picture filled with silence.
The streets lead us nowhere,
and to everywhere we had already been.
The lights turned on in the plaza
and I could feel
your mind embracing me
It is time to go back home.
It is time to sleep.
I headed south
and sat on the park bench
to look at myself sleeping on the couch.
When the light of the morning
overwhelmed my stupor,
I opened my eyes once more
to the landscape of her mind,
to find myself still sleeping
among the bell towers
and the tiled roofs,
shrouded in a hood
like an El Greco monk.
With the light of the sun
grazing the canvas from the side,
from the east as in a real dawn,
all the reliefs were on display.
All the places where the brush
engaged in quick, passionate work,
left tiny mounds of pigment
The line was now
a short wall
holding the buildings of the east in place:
the old structures
of her adventures,
in the new life she’d once pursued
looking for herself
(only to find me instead!)
* * *
I walked across the plaza once again,
this time looking to the north.
All the while stopping myself
from naming the streets
with the names they once had,
for I knew I couldn’t force them
to behave as they once did,
to lead to where they had once led.
I reached the road
where the light was brightest
and saw the line still waiting.
The strong, black line
was now the neck of a sprawling cat.
This cat was not a creature.
This cat was a helium balloon
laying spent on the sidewalk,
perhaps by now the sidewalk itself,
laden with memories
of walks and talks and
waiting. So much waiting…
A meeting place is a place
where people wait for a long time
and have a brief encounter
before they move on to somewhere else
Meeting places are sad places
where people brightly smile at each other
because
they had confirmed each other’s expectations
just by being there.
Maybe that is why,
I thought,
the cat balloon is deflated.
The smell of oil and turpentine
changes, I have discovered,
according to the colour and shape
of the image.
It sometimes
becomes the smell of return.
Then it reminds you of stone
and wine and
a fresh summer night by a medieval church.
And sometimes it brings
freshly baked sweets and coffee to life,
just as certain
as if you could bring them to your mouth.
I kept looking at my sleeping face
Was I happy?
It is easy to assume I was
She seems to have thought I was
at the very least, content,
when she scattered parts of me
across the canvas.
It is a good thought. But
why am I so quick to recognize myself?
I turn my gaze back to the east again
– to the southeast, to be precise,
where she laid down our beginnings.
Avoiding the name is very important here
The name is a lie
The name is the collapse that kills the cat
That other cat, I mean.
But the nameless places are all there,
welcoming and true.
* * *
When I go to sleep tonight
– if I go to sleep tonight,
I want to enter in my dreams
the old building on the corner
* * *
It is dark, because of the hour,
but it is lit
by a bright night sky
the moon and the stars are out
and the air is clear.
And inside, between the old pillars
we drink up the peace and the awe
of being there
and being together
In the street a white paving stone
marks the place
so that neither of us
dares to think is only dreaming.
“Only”!
Far away,
across the breadth of this little world,
I can see your hometown
and the stairs leading to our home,
and, though they are oceans apart
they fuse together
in a scenery of TV antennae,
ancients domes and bell towers.
It all makes sense to me:
it feels just as familiar a landscape
as your body.
The country of your imagination.
My adopted home,
my place to meet you, and
to admire you without witnesses.
* * *
I turn off the light,
fluff the pillows on the couch,
and climb the stairs
as stealthily as this old house allows,
to join you in slumber.
Perhaps to dream up other ways
to be closer to you
than what our human boundaries allow us.