Jealously, I guard my own hours

by Marina Martino

Down there the road is orange and quick.
Not quick like a river where the boats let the
current cruise them off the moors. Quick like
a train glowing orange. The big night smells
of cellar and somewhere in it there is a
heron. Not sleeping perched on a tree but
passing under scrutiny the pebbles where
the river is dry, not the road, which is always
dry, water-repellent. I would like to squat
next to every heron, and on top of every
train crossing the snow, unpredictable
living room. These afternoons are not
unknown to me—tracking down the miniatures
of the cold and picking leaves, which are also
orange, but slowly. When the evening ends
not everything ends, but there are changes.
The night enlarges. Now the water has
finished giving birds. Now it gives only
games projecting green. Ok: I will come to
bathe, but I will make my body smaller.

Marina Dora Martino is a poet. She currently lives in Venice where she works as an editor, copywriter and translator while learning a Venetian kind of rowing. Her work can be found in print and online in POETRY, Gutter and Harana, among others. She also draws comics of a man who is a bird on @mm_doppiaemme.