the hedgehog as metaphor is older than we think. self-protection that cannot tell itself apart from isolation.
schopenhauer told it with porcupines. in winter they huddle for warmth, prick each other, drift apart and grow cold, then come back, until they find the distance at which they can almost bear each other.
we remember it with hedgehogs, because the hedgehog does something sadder. it closes.
the animal appears once in “arici”, in the last line, and only as a warning.
e vina mea sau pur și simplu nu exiști? poate apari mai repede, până nu devin arici is it my fault or do you simply not exist? maybe you’ll come sooner before i become a hedgehog.
everything before that line is waiting. someone stands still while the world runs past, certain that everyone else already knows the way. they lie to themselves that there is still time. they are afraid of a new beginning, because every road seems to sell only one-way tickets, back into the past. they suspect they were born to be seen through: perceput drept transparent, perceived as transparent.
and then the one gesture the poem allows itself. scriu rânduri pe hârtie, le șterg și scriu din nou. i write lines on paper, erase them, write again.
this is what waiting does to a person. you draft yourself for someone who has not arrived, and you revise, and you revise.
worn at once
the first version of the fragrance took the title literally: a soft core wrapped in a shell, a hedgehog in the act of growing spines. it was a faithful picture.
a picture shows what a poem is about. a translation carries what the poem feels.
so arici was taken apart and started again, from the feeling underneath. the states never resolve into each other, the way doubt never settles into one emotion.
the search. something cold and green that reads differently on every skin, and on the same skin across the hours. it is meant to stay restless.
the unfulfillment. a base left incomplete on purpose. moss, dry as paper written on and erased. a cold musk, and a trace of raw suede. nothing round enough to rest in.
the trace of hope. one thread of mimosa, there from the first minute to the last. the poem’s hope flickers like a stairwell light on a timer.
the hedgehog stays where the poem put it, at the end, as the thing that has not happened yet. arici is the narrow space before the spines, still soft, still hoping someone arrives before the shell closes.
arici · vol. i of unspoken lines · read the poem