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“In the woods I found / a love poem, spoken into a gas mask.”

— Andreas Okopenko, tr. by Beth Bjorklund, from “July Morning,”

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“Goodbye, my honeybee.”

— Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Vanessa Bell written c. August 1908

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This is both amazing and profoundly irritating - the exact writing equivalent of that thing artists do - you know, how they’ll mess up anything that’s on expensive paper and planned in every single detail but get them doodling during a boring lesson and suddenly they’re Michel-bloody-angelo.

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Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Jill Jarrell, from A Personal Anthology; “To an Old Poet,” (x)

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“It’s better to write something, anything than to starve the monster. The monster must feed. And it will feed on your soul if not your words. Its appetite is insatiable. Write to save yourself from the monster.”

—

Don Roff

Word: insatiable

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my absolute favourite poem

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You shouldn’t let poets lie to you.

Björk

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One Nation

They promised a better world, one free from war and famine, where the grass grew green and healthy for everyone to enjoy, where the air was clean and fresh, and was as free as the water running down a waterfall. All that the UniCorp asked was for people to give their complete and absolute trust in them, and so people gave-in, convinced by the promises their great leaders had sworn for them. The whole globe was now joined as one, all 195 nations combined to form a second Pangaea of sorts while being still separated by the same oceans that separated the first continent years ago. UniCorp said it was a metaphor, and even labeled their official slogan as,

Union amidst Separation

And so, the world now resided in one country, Leviathan, named after the monster of lore that was brought to life in the scriptures of the ancients, infamous for rampaging the seas, striking like a hungry crocodile waiting for its prey. The nation was controlled by UniCorp itself, an organized group founded by the world leaders of past centuries with the aim to increase competency amongst nations, equalling the global competency rates so as to decrease international competitions, hopefully leading to a more prosperous and harmonious society.

For the first 50, years after its establishment, UniCorp did just that. People were now given equal benefits, had equal roles and responsibilities in the community, and to top it off, work efficiency had gone off the charts. But everything changed one fateful day, on the second of September in the year 2045, when the bombs fell from the sky, nuking the lower half of Leviathan right off the map, settling the world’s growing population rate once and for all.

The Higher Nation and the Lower Nation were born that day, with the latter prospering at the demise of the former. After years of planning strategically and secretively, the Higher Nation officials waged war against their Lower Nation country men, catching everyone by surprise when the nukes fell down. It was thought that the radiation from the impact killed the whole Lower Nation population, but unbeknownst to majority of the fortuned Higher Nation residents, a few survived; not so lucky themselves as they suffered the aftermaths of the collision on their own, bereft from the community they had grown up in.

Most of the buildings collapsed into mountains of rubble and debris. The few that did stayed upright turned into the shelters Lower Nationals clung onto for survival. Ruins turned into homes and beacons of hope for a bright future ahead. At first glance, everything seemed uninhabitable, inanimate, and dead. Nothing spoke of life, only the dim and chaos-stricken streets of the Lower Nation could be seen casted off with an eternal fog, too overwhelmed with dust and smoke to produced clear light. No one spoke of the Lower Nation anymore these days. No one, but the survivors.

“PAX!” a distant shout can be heard echoing amongst the nothingness. Lifeless bodies were scattered everywhere. Her eyes jumped on face after face, trying to search for the source of the noise. She recognized that voice, of course, it belonged to her dear comrade, her friend, Volk Arslan, and for a second she thought she was hallucinating because his chances of survival was slim and possibilities of seeing him neared the impossible. But then again, she made it through herself, so perhaps Volk did escape the almost inevitable odds of his death.

“Volk,” She tried calling out to him, sounding more unsure of what she was saying, “Volk Arslan?”

A few seconds passed and no one replied. She figured her imaginations got the better of her and started walking tediously across the rubble, making sure not to slip. Her mind decided on leaving the scene and heading back to her make-shift camp by the ruined theatre, but her heart was telling her otherwise, unsure of whether or not the voice she had heard was real. So she called out once more to be sure, raising her voice as loud as possible.

“VOLK!”

Suddenly, she heard the crunching of gravel from afar, the kind of sound a boot makes when in contact with shattered uneven flooring. It was quiet enough for her to detect such sounds, as she faced the direction of the noise. From the fog, a silhouette emerged, growing in size ever so slightly as the figure inched closer to her. She was up in her defenses now, grabbing the knife she had constructed out of the fallen metal scraps she had found when she first explored her torn nation. Sweat started dripping down her forehead, soaking her tattered camouflage t-shirt. She took slow strides back, lengthening the distance between her and her unseen enemy. She feared the High Nationals were back, trying to lure her into her doom, but when the figure was near enough for her to distinguish its features, she sighed, putting down her weapon and running towards the man before her.

“You’re alive!” She shouted with glee as she wrapped her arms around him tightly. “Thank heavens you’re alive!” she cried into his shoulder, inhaling his dust covered sweater, the kind he always wore when they met at their local park, which was now the ruin of rubble beneath their feet.

“Well, shucks, Pax,” Volk teased, “didn’t think you’d see the last of me, did you?” It was funny. Even at the end of the world, he never ceased to make her smile. He was the only piece of home she had left and nothing could describe the relief she was feeling, knowing she didn’t have to toddle the world alone anymore.

She took a step back to examine her friend, as he did as well with her. His dark brown hair turned ashy now from the debris that must have dusted off his body. His face looked rugged, tired from days of exhaustion, perhaps, but still emitting a humanly glow. She frowned upon seeing his left eye barely open. Seeing her questioning look, he explained that when the nukes hit, he was in the kitchen and a big chunks of the counter top met his face, possibly blinding his left eye. This also explains the cut that ran through his forehead, that started just above his left eyebrow. It had stopped bleeding, by then, all dried up into this brown grayish scab.

The rest of his body seemed intact though, minus the limp he had in his walk. She rolled up the fabric of his jeans covering up his right leg to inspect the cause of his discomfort. With wide eyes, she saw big splotches of red, blue, and violet stamped all across his leg. Deep and severe bruises marked his skin and impaired him from walking properly. But she wasn’t surprise. Seeing him alive was a miracle in itself.

Placing her arm behind his back to support his frame, she stood beside him now, standing shoulder to shoulder. Bringing her lips up to his right ear, she spoke softly in whispered tones, “Come, let’s get you to where I camp. It’s not too far from here.” And slowly they trudged their way eastward stopping only when they saw a small fire lit inside the old theatre she now considered her home. On the way there, Volk studied his surroundings and felt his heart sink as they passed piles of dead bodies, some of which he recognized to be his old peers. He could still hear their laughter resonating in his ears as he stared at their bodies, faces open for the dead to look back at, fear still laced in their eyes, staring lifelessly at the sky with agape mouths.

“Taj, Bindi, Liliom, Chione,” he continued the list he had made in his head, looking down at his lap as he sat sullenly by the fire, “they’re all-“

“They’re dead, Volk,” she interrupted, not wanting to hear the names of her fallen confidants, tending the fire with a blank unreadable look on her face, “which is why it’s a miracle I even found you.” Her grey eyes grew darker remembering her lost friends, tears threatening to spill from her eyes.

“Ey,” Volk cooed, rubbing her back as she knelt before the fire, “I’m glad you’re alive.”

Ignoring the fire, she turned towards him, producing a soft side smile from her lips. Her mind now reminiscing all the fond memories they had shared together as young children, sitting on the park bench dreaming of the world ahead of them, confiding amongst themselves what it was that they longed to be when they were older. He had grown to be a Maths professor at a private lesser-known university and she was on her way in publishing her first book, as she aimed for a PhD in psychology. None of them had quite imagined life to be like this, with them in their mid-thirties, sitting closely together in front of a bonfire lit in the heart of a war-torn nation. Pax knew every bitter detail of the situation that had been forced upon them by the cruel minds of the Higher Nationals and she still chose to look at him with a smile on her face, knowing that this would all fade away soon, thinking the radiation would soley seep in her senses.

“How long have you been awake,” he finally asked, cutting the silence.

“About two weeks. It was hard getting out the rubble though.”

“Two weeks? I’ve been up for about six days!” He replied with an enthusiasm she hadn’t quite expected from him, and so her eyebrows scrunched up as she looked at her companion with wonder and awe. Confused by her look, he inquired, “What? Is there something wrong?”

With a sigh, she turned towards the fire again, turning her face away from his. “Nothing. I just wonder how you do it.”

“How I do what?”

“You know, be happy all the time.”

With that statement, he laughed a hearty laugh, giving his first real cackle since he awoke from his dilapidated apartment. “Please, Pax. If there’s anything I am, it’s definitely not happy, and most definitely not all the time!”

“I know, but you always smile, no matter what the situation,” she recollected as she gathered her knees in the company of her arms, pulling them closer to her body, “and I kind-of admire that about you, you know?”

“Well, yes that is true,” he agreed frankly, “but I’m far from being happy, Pax. You know that.” And she did know. Before the nuking, a chain of unfortunate occurrences had left Volk quite helpless. His parents had already passed on years before, and it was such a pity that his older brother, Barb, had died from a car accident as he headed towards the north to visit his girlfriend, Evey. After that, one followed after the other, stealing from him the last ounces of hope he had left. But he was never scarce of hope, he didn’t think like that. Sure, he wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t hopeless either, and that made him stand out among all the people Pax had met, and perhaps that’s why they remained friends to this day.

“You know, I heard on the radio,” she tried to steer away the topic, “that the High Nation officials would be conducting a search soon, looking for survivors and all.”

“You have a radio?” He smirked completely ignoring the point.

“Yeah well, I found it near a dump somewhere. I’m surprised it still worked.”

“A lot of things can surprise you at times like these,” he interjected.

“But anyway,” she continued,

“I’m getting worried, you know? They do still want to kill us, to bring the whole world at a balance or something. You know, solving the population problem and all that. The radio did say the officials were willing to bring the survivors back to safety, but after all this, I hardly believe they’d keep their word for it.”

“It’s probably just propaganda, trying to get the people there up north to believe everything’s okay.”

“Well that’s...” she struggled to find the right words, “sick.”

“Sick, sick it is...”

His mind wandered off for a moment, trying to think of a new subject to bring up. “Listen you should probably head off to sleep,” he said affectionately tucking her blond hair behind her ears. “It’s getting quite dark, innit? Get some rest. To be quite frank, you look like hell!” Once again, she smiled at her friend, thinking about how silly he was and how thankful she was for his silliness. She needed it, at times like this. Carefully, she propped her body down on the carpeted theatre floor, taking in all its roughness on her cheeks, stoically lying on the tiny bits of ceiling that fell down on the carpet.

“I’m not joking! It’s like the dungeons of hades on your face!” he assured her, with his laughter, lulling her to sleep.

—————————————————————

“We found her, over,” someone spoke into a walkie-talkie

She was awakened by a man’s voice, different from Volk’s. Sitting upright now, she assessed her surroundings with fear. She tried to wake Volk, but his spot from the night before laid vacant beside her. Volk was no where to be found and her fear intensified.

The fire she had lit was now out, and standing in front of her were at least five men, dressed in UniCorp Official uniforms, each of their faces covered by a gas mask. The badges on their right breast pockets showed a red eagle beak facing upwards, with a royal blue ring wrapped around the mid-section of the beak. Knowing who they were, an evident scowl appeared on her face. They were from the north - Higher Nation officials coming to take her down.

“Where’s Volk?” She demanded, mow standing up with hands balled into fists.

“Lieutenant Vulcan,” the official who had been talking in the walkie-talkie ignored her question and motioned for one of the the officials on the left. Her eyes strained with anticipation, as the called official approached her with heavy uneven steps. She stared at his boots, familiar with the sound it produced as it crunched on the ground against the dirtied carpeted floor.

“Detain the final subject.” the Higher official who had called the lieutenant ordered him.

With a nod, Lieutenant Vulcan produced handcuffs from his tactical pants and locked Pax’s hands together. As he did so, the lieutenant positioned his face just in front of her ear, acting as casual as possible so as not to raise suspicion when he whispered ever so silently under the mask, speaking with a voice that gave her both relief and anger.

“I’m sorry, Pax. I really am. You’re the only hope I got.”

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Morphine

Somebody was calling him now from the other side of the door. The voice was distant compared to the splashes the shower was making as water cascaded down its nozzle. But none of that existed to him at that moment. His head was floating high above the clouds at incalculable altitudes, with his eyes wide open, staring blankly at the plain beige ceiling, seeing nothing but an empty void in front of him. He felt weightless, he was weightless. Though one could observe his palms pressed tightly on the cold bathroom tiles, he felt nothing, almost as if he was grasping thin air. His legs, thin, gangly, and shuddering against the tiled floor, were at the brink of collapsing under his fragile state, when he was sent back to lucidity by her cries.

“Peter!” his wife cried banging the door at the other end, “Wake up! Wake up, Peter!”

Suddenly his eyes shot open, slowly readjusted to the bright white fluorescence of the bathroom. His senses still quite foggy and his breath disoriented by the heaviness in his chest. With a sharp in take of breath, his cheeks blossomed back to color, almost like having a soul being brought back to the vessel that had been carrying it. But it wasn’t all too pleasant for him. He was coughing violently now, trying to release all the water that had flowed into his nostrils in his dazed state. His lungs threatening to cave in were releasing much more fluid than expected, making him gag for air. However, hearing him cough, signaled no alarm in his wife’s part, only relief. She knew he was awake now and that’s all that mattered to her at that moment.

With a soft knock on the door, his wife opened her mouth once again - this time, speaking with more tenderness than urgency.

“Open the door, sweetheart,” she said smiling softly, though she knew he couldn’t see it from inside the bathroom. “Let me in, darling.”

He tried to answer, but he was crouching now, naked and cold with one of his hands clinging on to the steel tube connecting the faucet to the shower, and the other still palm-flat on the wall, trying to gasp for air. Struggling for breath, he opened his mouth slowly and feebly. His parted lips quivering ever so delicately as he tried to articulate himself.

“One moment, de-“ cut by another fit of coughing, his speech was interrupted painfully, with his heart now thrashing his insides. His hand, which was once pressed on the bathroom tiles, was now gripping the shower curtains tightly, creating little crescents on his palms through the fabric. Both hands were hanging on to dear life, trying to save him from toppling down onto the bathroom floor and making the situation much worse.

After two more minutes, he successfully avoided collision, and was now breathing much normally. His wife was still waiting hopefully and helplessly outside their shared bathroom, praying her husband would emerge out of the door soon.

“Honey, do you need me to call an ambulance?”

She was starting to get worried now, and when no one answered her, she leapt straight to their bedside table, running towards the telephone. With pale shaking hands she reached for the phone and was about to dial the emergency hotline, when the door opened to reveal a tall slouched man, naked except for the towel wrapped loosely around his waist, breathing heavily with eyes rimmed red and nostrils blaring wide. In shock, she let the receiver drop and stared at the figure before her speechless and with her feet turned to lead.

“I’m...” he struggled and spoke with a soft voice, letting out a few breaths, “I’m okay now. I’m fine.”

With small strides, his bare feet approached the bed slowly, treating every step with care as if the ground was crumbling beneath him. Having felt the soft white mattress touch the bottom of his knee, his body descended onto the bed, letting the duvet devour him whole. His mind went blank, thinking of nothing but his breathing and weather or not he had coughed out every last drop of liquid in his lungs.

It was only then that his wife found the courage to speak, but only in quiet whimpers, almost inaudible for him to hear. Tears were down rolling down her cheeks, slowly and then all at once. She sank down on to their carpeted bedroom floor, her legs positioned in weird uncomfortable angles making her pink skirt flare on the chocolate-colored carpet. She did not know what to do, she did not know what to say, she did not know what to feel. She felt only her raging heartbeat as her heart leapt back and forth inside her chest, piercing her ribs and aching for her husband, as he lied there almost unconscious and semi-defeated by the water that had almost drowned him.

“D-d-did it work?” she stuttered with her warm tears choking her throat.

“I saw you, Helen,” he finally spoke, lying down with his arms resting relaxed on his abdomen. He was feeling a bit calmer now, compared to a few minutes ago. His eyes were closed and a small smile appeared on his face. His breathing was steady and slow, as if he was about to go into deep slumber. “I saw you back in the shower, when my head was all fucked up. I saw you and I saw her, our child.”

At that sentence, her sobbing became fiercer and her eyes were producing tears faster than ever. She covered her face now with her palms, unable to look at her husband anymore. But he ignored all this and continued, letting his mind wander off peacefully in recollection of his fantasy. “She looked just like you, of course. Light brown hair, emerald eyes, the same glassy stare that you always have when you and I took long walks in my mother’s garden. You remember those days? Yes, ah well, you were beautiful, Helen. You still are, and she was too.”

His eyes were now open, staring at the ceiling just like he did in the shower, only this time he was perfectly aware of the things around him. His wife was still crying, sitting limply beside the telephone. Her tears were slowly draining her and she could feel herself right at the edge of sleep. Her body was threatening to faint, but she stuck around to listen to her husband’s voice.

“I mean...” he struggled to find the right words, “i-i-it was weird. I knew I was dreaming, of course, but it was different from all the other times this had happened, you know? I-I-I... I actually wanted to stay. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to hold you. I wanted both of you an-“ His sentence was cut short, interrupted by his wife who was now calm enough, to speak despite her situation on the floor.

“Honey, you have to stop this! Whatever Mark told you is a lie,” she shouted trying to fight back her sob. “Dwelling on these things- they aren’t worth it!” She was crawling now, trying to reach for her husband.

“This is now,” she said trying to be strong as she took both of his hands in hers. She opened her mouth once again. “You have to stop.” But this time it was different. Her voice was replaced by a man’s, dry and raspy, hollow and tired.

Slowly the scene evaporated right before his eyes. He was lying, sluggishly on a couch now, sitting in front of a man in glasses, middle-aged and balding with little grey hairs sticking out of a few segments of his head, holding on to a pen and a notepad with previously written texts scribbled across the open sheet. The room was quite small and quite dim, lit only by the small lamp propped on the desk by the other end of the room, and by the sunlight filtering through the curtain fabric. There were three paintings seen on the wall to his right, and a bookshelf nailed to wall behind the desk. He was in an office, he figured, but he had not quite remembered fully how he got there, and why he was there at all.

“Peter,” the man snapped him out of his confusion, looking quite disturbed himself.

“Yes?”

“Are you back?”

“Where’s my wife? I could have sworn Helen was just here a second ago.”

With a sigh, the man took off his glasses and wiped them with the hem of his white buttoned-down shirt. He was frowning now, looking down at his glasses with knitted eyebrows. Suddenly it all dawned to Peter. Every question he had previously formulated in his thoughts were now answered and he had never felt the color on his face drain away as fast as it did that moment.

“It seems you have been taking much more than the prescribed amount, have you?” With that question, Peter just gulped, speechless, knowing of no words to say. The man sighed once more and scribbled on his notepad while he spoke. “I’m afraid we’ll have to alter the prescription, seeing that this is only making your maladies much worse.”

“My head wouldn’t stop hurting,” Peter finally spoke, “and I didn’t know of any other way to stop it.”

“Really? Well, it seems that you’ve been taking advantage of the situation haven’t

you?” Finished with his notes, the man decided to put his glasses back on, crouched down with his elbows propped on his knees supporting his weight, and looked at Peter, intently, hoping to shed a little more light on the situation. “Look, Peter. I know you’ve had it rough and I am in no position to nose into your personal problems. But abusing your medication will not help you at all.”

“I know. I know. I just- well... Oh, I don’t know.” Peter was lost now, torn between caring for his health and getting this appointment over with. But sitting down listening to what his doctor had to say, wasn’t helping him at all, at the moment.

“It seems like I’ll have to up your dosage,” the man calculated, “and don’t think you can get away with it this time. This is only for your health, and you of all people should know that.”

And that was all Peter wanted to hear. His mind wandered aimlessly again into the deep blue, thinking fondly of the many dreams awaiting ahead of him, longing to get a glimpse of his wife, once again, and the daughter he had never met. It was then that the color rushed back into his face as he smiled a big toothy grin at the man sitting in front of him, ignoring the growing tumor invading his brain.

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As Time Flies

The streets were packed tonight, he noted while sipping on a bottle of Carlsberg outside a local pub he had stumbled upon as he walked the streets of Copenhagen that night. The tour guide he hired promised him it was the best in the world, but it tasted no different from all the beers he had tried before. The watch on his wrist showed that it was already 23:49; it was almost midnight, but he still didn’t have the inclination to walk back to his hotel. Instead, he payed for his drink, got up from his seat, and left without the slightest idea where he was headed.

He strolled along casually with the busy streets of Copenhagen that night, looking at the sky occasionally to get a glimpse of the stars, hoping the constellations would take him somewhere; but to his demise, it was a cloudy night with barely a beam of moonlight appearing behind the thick blanket of clouds. It was then that he thought about the events that lead to that moment, with him walking alone holding a newly emptied bottle of bear in his hands.

There wasn’t much to think about actually, having drank quite a few bottles of Carlsberg back at the pub. He wasn’t one to get drunk easily, but he did feel a bit tipsy now. All he could remember was the tour he and his best mates took that morning - the three of them laughing along with the other tourists as the tour guide let a few jokes slide while en route to Copenhagen’s famous destinations. But it was only when evening came that their laughter did subside.

Everything had gotten quite awkward when he had brought up a topic his other two mates did not quite expect to talk about. This led them to leave the restaurant they were in to go back to their rooms at the hotel faster than any of them could’ve dreamt. It had only been 15 minutes since he had arrived back at his hotel room when he decided to leave. Feeling nauseated by the emptiness of his room, he stood up, got his necessities and left to take a breath of fresh air. But little did he know that fresh air would come in the form of a few chugs of beer at the nearest pub he had come across that night. He was hoping for a rather quiet leisurely walk, but luck wasn’t on his side, he supposed.

He had been walking for 20 minutes now, since he had left the pub, but nothing he saw looked familiar to him. He must have strayed away from the path the tour took that morning. His sober self would have probably been worried at that moment. He was lost and he new it, but his brain failed to care about the situation. Instead, he continued walking around in different directions, getting lost in the sea of people that met him along the way.

The street he had just entered turned out much more crowded than the others he had just walked through. Bright lights and flashy neon signs met him at every angle. Laughter rang in his ears as the people started singing local Danish cheers, obviously intoxicated by the distinct smell of the cigarettes they were smoking, and by the bittersweet taste of the alcohol they were chugging down their throats. He started feeling fuzzy and a bit dizzy as his eyes jumped from table to table, observing heedlessly the demeanors of those that were around him. He decided to take a quick smoke himself and reached for the pack of cigarettes he was carrying in his pocket; and so he leaned against the nearest pole he could find and lit his first cigarette.

“Ey, Stephen! Didn’t you say you wanted to go here?” a woman in front of him spoke to the man following behind her. They were obviously american tourists, he thought, but at least they got to where they were headed.

“How do they call it again?” the woman continued.

“I don’t know. Nay Haven, I think.”

So he was in Nyhavn, he realized, the famous harbor lined with its famous colorful buildings showcasing a vibrant atmosphere that both the locals and the tourists were addicted to. That was why the streets were packed. The tour passed by Nyhavn earlier, but he wasn’t paying much attention then; although, he did recall the tour guide warning them about this harbor’s high theft reports. But he let the thought slide and continued to suck on his cigarette. He had nothing to lose, nothing anyone would steal from him.

His stare grew dazed as ten minutes passed by, puff after puff. His cigarette was now the ashes under his feet. For a moment, he considered lighting another one, but his hand proved itself immovable as he stared at the harbor docks. A blur of people fled in front of him as he stared at the open, lost in thought. The number of people walking around at this time - already nearing 1:00 in the morning - was considerably less that it was when he first entered the harbor vicinity, and after around 15 minutes of staring idly at the waterfront, the pub-goers behind him started to lessen noticeably. It was then that he took his first real breath of air, free from the hustle of the busy tourist hotspot.

He looked at the sky again, as he did almost an hour ago, hoping to find a much more clearer sky; but though the moon was peaking out a bit more compared to when he last checked, there were still no stars to be seen. Yet he still wondered what had brought him to Nyhavn and how he was supposed to get back.

He was lost in thought on that somewhat chilly summer’s night, gazing at the blank night sky, when a group came walking along the harbor’s edge. They looked around his age, probably younger by a few years, all carrying that youthful smile plastered on their faces. All in all there were four of them - two boys and two girls, all locals to this busy city. With that, he payed close attention to the new group. They spoke in straight danish, but his slight knowledge of the language was enough for him to pick up some key points to their conversation.

“Tak!” one of the boys yelled back to the girl who handed him a bottle of beer. The boy was quite short, compared to his other two male companions. His tousled blonde hair was covered by the faded red hoodie he was wearing. While taking his first sip, his gaze focused on the water, relaxed with an air of complete calm engulfed in his pale blue irises.

The girl who had just handed him a drink, studied him closely with her dark hazel eyes. Her curly brow locks flowed freely with the night breeze.

“Hej, August,” she called for his attention

“Ja?”

“When did you say Clara was moving again?”

“Next month-“

The other girl they were with cut his dialogue. She spoke with a sharp tongue. Her brooding blue eyes darkened as she opened her mouth. “She called me up yesterday though, saying something about moving a little bit earlier.”

“What? Well then, when is she planning on going?” the other girl replied quite shaken with what her friend had just disclosed. August remained silent, but his cheeks grew quite pale.

“It’s true,” the other boy continued the conversation. “I heard she might be gone before the week ends.” He didn’t look quite sure with the information he was speaking off for his pale green eyes avoided his three friends’ stares. But either way, the news seemed to bother him just as much as his friends were at the moment.

“And she couldn’t come tonight?” The brown haired girl looked down at her feet, as she grabbed the bottle of beer she had just given to August. With a nod, he let her take a sip, and both stared aimlessly at the water below them.

“It’s okay, Maja,” the other girl reassured. “Let’s just give her a call tomorrow.”

All four of them looked quite drained now with neither of them daring to continue the conversation. The four faces, that a second ago where all lit with smiles and laughter, were now dazed, staring at the ripples of water threading at the harbor of Nyhavn. Looking at them and how their conversation slowly dissolved into thin air, he was reminded of the events that happened with him and his friends that evening that lead him to this place.

“Hej,” one of the boys called. “Hvad er Klokken?”

“1:34,” Maja answered. “We should probably head back, shouldn’t we?”

Silently the three agreed with her and proceeded to leave the scene. As they slowly packed up and left, he too considered going back to the hotel, but he stopped on his tracks when he saw something fall from one of the girls’ jacket pockets.

He stood there stiff, deciding whether or not to retrieve whatever it was that had fallen. His mind was swirling now and his eyes started to get blurry, but most of all, he couldn’t stop thinking about the group that had just left a second ago - he wasn’t sure why though.

He felt his phone vibrate from under his pocket. It could have been one of his friends, but he didn’t feel like reaching in his jacket and checking the message. They would just have to wait for him to get back, he thought, and so he pulled his denim jacket tighter around his body and headed towards the fallen object, as the wind started to get stronger.

He reached for the object and examined it in his hands. It was a picture that looked like it was taken from an instant camera, the kind that were revived nowadays. The picture itself was dark and looked like it was taken in a dimly lit living room. All the four friends he had encountered earlier were in it - two were sitting on the couch and the others were standing up behind them. Another person was seated on the floor in front of them, right in the middle. She looked like she was the one taking the picture, with one of her hands out of sight. Her skin was tanned and her face was flushed. She was probably drunk based on the glass of beer she was holding on her other hand. Her eyes were wide with joy and her black hair was wrapped neatly in a bun. She must be Clara, the girl they were talking about.

He felt himself pulling a soft smile on his mouth, as he looked at the picture. He didn’t know any of them personally, but seeing how happy they all looked made him feel a bit nostalgic - not for himself, but for them. It was then that he thought about all the good days they must have had together and how all that would abruptly end when Clara leaves for whatever the reason.

Looking at the photo, he remembered his own friends who were probably wondering about him back at the hotel, and his smile disappeared into a straight line. It was then that he reached for his phone and checked the message they had sent him.

I got a few beers left in my room’s mini bar. Wanna drink?

So he checked the photo one last time and let it go. Silently, he wished that the wind take it to wherever it belonged.