I dream I walk through a desert of stone.
It once took months for letters to reach their recipients; packages of supplies to pass foreign customers – worlds gone by. Bananas were posted to prevent scurvy and luck-charms embroidered slowly.
Once, we had more time.
I dream I walk through a desert of stone, and the ocean is rock, the solitary line of horizon also solidifying.
It is my new job to be lighthouse keeper in this country. Having reason, the planet loses its immensity.
Lovers survived colonisation, and shipments to distant lands.
A message in a bottle travelled thirteen oceans to emerge at the feet of the sender’s friend.
Each mystery is unlikely enough to be possible.
The human heart is hopeless in its rhythmic incessancy.
Until a light goes out, there is the shadow it casts.
When all falls dark, there is still an opposite in the universe. Night is the absence of something elsewhere in existence.
My beacon will scan the rocks, and I will enter a state of isolation required of me in order to create.
No visitors will reach the lighthouse. The dream foretells my fate.
Necessary emotions are felt as I plan to go. Who will I miss most?
A rose is framed behind glass.
The world is a strange, and weary place.
A locket no longer contains her hair.
Great escapes were made before advent of internet and telephone.
Time takes less time to pass, but there are more ways to fill it. Distraction gives us the illusion of living longer. There’s too much to do to decide.
Vacillation consumes a considerable part of our day.
A messenger ran across Europe in chainmail armour to deliver news that a war was over. The messenger died fulfilling his destiny.
We wait for buses in the rain.
Nothing is so important anymore.
I am travelling at the speed of light to the lighthouse. There is no transportation in dreams – rarely any bus tickets or handing over of cash, excuses or thoughts of bankruptcy.
I fly to India without an aeroplane, and this is somehow normal.
I land in the stone desert. The light is black and grey. I am entering deep aloneness – the fortification of bricks, of solitude, and strengthening balms.
My body is an arc on the spherical earth.
Mutinies were unheard of in tribal societies without newspapers.
A refugee crossed from Russia to Israel without telling anyone.
In times of war, whereabouts were written underneath postage stamps that were later steamed off, and reused.
I wait outside the lighthouse, searching for a reason.
I go inside and turn on the light.
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Lara Popovic is a 27 year old Serbo-Dutch poet, artist, and activist. She lives in London, and rides a bicycle every day. www.larapopovic.carbonmade.com