Someone watches the world pair off around him — every couple a direction he doesn’t have. He goes looking for the person meant to close that distance, and on the way, the doubt arrives first: am I enough? can she even see me? The poem ends where it has to — and underneath the question is a warning.
I watch the world rushing by, like everyone else already knows the way,
only I remain still, caught between a dream and an ache.
I lie myself that it all makes sense, that there’s still time left to come,
but the void weighs on me, like a shadow across my retina.
Afraid to stumble again, to believe in a new beginning
when every road sells only one-way tickets, back into the past.
I wonder if it’s me, if I could ever be enough,
but I was born into a fate that made me transparent to the touch.
I write lines on paper, erase them, write again,
perhaps I’ll read them one day, when the rain no longer echoes.
Until then, I stay on the edge, trying to understand
where I go wrong, what I’m chasing, why I keep losing ground.
Is it my fault or do you simply not exist?
Maybe you’ll come sooner before I become a hedgehog.
ma uit la lumea care aleargă, parcă toți știu ce vor
doar eu rămân pe loc, mă-mpiedic intre vis și dor
mă mint ca totul are sens, ca mai e timp sa vină
dar mă apasă golul, ca o umbră pe retină
mi-e teamă să mă împiedic iar, să cred într-un nou început
când toate drumurile par să aibă bilet doar dus, înspre trecut
mă-ntreb dacă-i problema la mine, dacă aș fi vreodată suficient
dar eu am fost sorit unui destin în care să fiu perceput drept transparent
scriu rânduri pe hârtie, le șterg și scriu din nou
poate le voi citi într-o zi, când n-o să mai plouă în ecou
dar până atunci, stau pe margine, încerc să înțeleg
unde greșesc, ce caut, de ce mă pierd, spre ce alerg
e vina mea sau pur și simplu nu exiști?
poate apari mai repede, până nu devin arici
“maybe you’ll come sooner — before I become a hedgehog.”
the confession · from the poem arici, vol. i
arici is built the way its poem is built: soft on the inside, armoured on the outside. The longer the waiting goes on, the thicker the shell grows. You smell the shell first. The cocoon is earned.
Old paper and chestnut bark — a library with the heating off. Sandalwood holding the walls upright. And beneath it, a warm animalic musk: the body still in the room, even after the person has withdrawn.
old books · chestnut · sandalwood · warm animalic muskNashi pear and clementine, cold at first touch. The steam of tea. Then almond milk — heliotropin’s powdered warmth — the softness the spines exist to protect.
nashi pear · clementine · tea · almond milk · heliotropinarici is worn at whisper distance. It does not announce you to a room, it stays within arm’s reach, for the one allowed that close before the spines grow in.
arici is what's left when the waiting starts to change you. It's the ache of watching everyone else find their person, and the quiet math that follows. am I enough? can she even see me? It's the moment right before the first spines grow: still open, still soft, still hoping someone arrives before the shell closes. Not sadness. Not armor yet. Just the narrow space between the two.
a short filmarici is in its final stage of formulation.
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hand-blended · walnut cap carved by hand · the poem in every box