Panic Poem by Eeva Park

And what will happen now?
When there's no electricity.
The screen is black
And there is no light to be seen in the whole village.
Everything is quiet,
even that, which I didn't notice before the murmuring.
Also the radio in the kitchen.
And now?
What will happen to me?
In this quiet twilight.
That very word almost slipped my mind.
I sit listening.
I sit oddly.
Time stands still.
For a moment. For a century.
And that is happening now.

One body in solitude cries out and another answers.
Our bodies never once doubted.
The skin realized and understood, when you came and we stayed,
our skin pattern's exact match,
just like grass to a landscape, trees and hills and
and an ever-changing sky above them,
the skin realized,
the bodies never once regretted,
if thoughts hadn't wallowed in pains of longing to get away,
then nothing would have chopped us apart.

Lit up with light a shadow moves in the window.
Maybe you remember that theater,
that we played as children at each birthday,
when the whole neighborhood gathered at our place,
because our mom let us nail the theater curtain wherever
and the shadow theater could begin.

Translated by Jayde Will