A SHIP LOG, Poetry by Hilde Susan Jaegtnes

Genre: Shitty love story, sugar breasts, erotic, obsession wit Danish assholes, dark love letter

6:20 pm. Arrival in Viborg, Denmark. He offers to carry my backpack and kicks up a piece of shiny quartz from the gravel. Lots of those around here, he says indifferently. He doesn’t notice me slipping the quartz into my pocket, the closest we’ll ever get to exchanging jewellery.

4:01 pm. I lie under the comforter, fall asleep while he is watching Brideshead Revisited and calling out the lines. I wake up as he pulls me out of my comforter cave. He sniffs my shoulder. No kissing. His face twists with seriousness, purgatory. He doesn’t take his glasses off when he goes to sleep. He turns me around, and back, can’t make up his mind, looks into my eyes by mistake. I face his wrath, obediently turn away, push back. The light from the laptop screen blesses the blind. Outside on the lawn, the seminar participants make a circle and learn how to look each other in the eye, trust each other, catch each other when they fall. The tree in the lake sinks another few millimeters into the mud.

11:40 pm. We’re sitting at the local tavern. The waitress leans towards us with her breasts full of sugar. He smiles at her, tells her he’ll be back tomorrow, once I’ve left. The Norwegian national team in cross-country cycling stomps into our evening dressed in skin-tight flags. Go Norway, I holler. His shoulders tighten with fury. How dare I molest them? They haven’t done anything to bother me. He turns away. We are too different, this won’t work, he barks. I bite down so my molars nearly break, the sugar crackles. The Norwegians hoist their flag to the top and topple the Big Dipper. The apples come crashing down on us, I cry, stumble ahead, unable see the path in the dark; he doesn’t let me hold onto him.
 

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