We Used to Go to the Ballet
By Susanne Sophie Schmalwieser
my body aches when it sees your beauty
and how gently your nose greets your skin as it‘s flowing
down to become one with the rest
of this face i try not look at
you know your movies
and everyone
watching balanchine tonight
my father bought his first car at fortyfive
i know my food stamps
and how my head feels after working
past midnight, the longing
for sleep when i see the sun rise feels like longing for water
you met me when i wore the golden dress for the first time
i wasn‘t sure how to ask you questions
those offerings like shapeless stones for someone wearing rubies
as a child i dreamt of rubies
now that i’m grown i know not to fool myself
by speaking of fate as an old friend
(if it‘s a friend it doesn‘t remember
where to fit me on this map of fragmented memories)
you say you thought i were older
and that the sea‘s been your only home
you’ve never cared for clothes and stuff like that
for lack of material i became a materialist
we go out on that boat and become unsure if we‘re more
than human material in the gaze of the other
i am a materialist but i loosen my grip
your ruby eyes are the last things that sink
looking just as they do on a rainy morning
humphrey humpback
somewhere in this deep blue desert i see the waves break
the words silenced as they‘re leaving
neuronal networks
and nothing left to weave your name to mine
i shake your fathers hand like old friends pretending to remember
like i still know the smell of your neck or the colour of your gaze on a rainy morning
maybe i‘ll wear rubies once i look beautiful as my mother
who left me at my fathers doorstep at the age of 5 weeks
are passing by
sometimes i still wake up as if from a fever dream
as if your name and that last deep embrace is an illness which from i have yet to recover
Susanne Sophie Schmalwieser was born in 2001 in Austria. She's currently enrolled as a master's student of German Philology and Digital Humanities at the University of Vienna. Susanne has published various pieces of prose and poetry in German language journals and anthologies and was invited to the Young Writer's Convention of the Berliner Festspiele (Berlin festival) in 2018. Her scientific and artistic interests include different levels of the interconnectedness of language, technology and society.
