What I know
by Sophie Fetokaki
I know that your hands have touched things. I think of those this things, of how metal feels under your grip. How your left arm (pale, freckled) feels as your right hand (ringed, and there is a story there too) idly strokes it. How the blades of grey hair feel, being pushed out of your eyes (although they always fall there again, and this keeps your gaze concealed to others, and you like that, and the evidence suggests that for most of your life you have liked that). How the silver chain feels, disappearing behind your shirt, resting on the bristles of your chest hair and fleshy breast. I know that I have desired you, that desire was a currency between us, that I ended up with the raw end of the deal, that I go away empty handed, that I cut my right forefinger trying to open a bottle (was hast du gemacht? said the Turkish man in the kebab shop who gave me a tissue), that I have to remind myself always of the gap, that I fall into the gap nonetheless. I know how the cut felt (it didn’t feel like much actually), how I walked home (one foot in front of the other), that I yawned and how it felt to turn round and crawl inside the chasm and to find my own rage and sit quietly beside it, how it feels to shave my own bristly beard (because I dreamt it) and to touch the little smarting cuts on my cheeks.
Sophie Fetokaki is a performer, writer and researcher based between Helsinki and Cyprus. Her poetry has been published in the Chicago Review of Books’ journal Arcturus, in multilingual journal Ós (Iceland), and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in music performance and an MA in English literature.