156: I Have Been Loved

If, when old age comes,

I sit quietly by a window with a view

of open fjords and mountains

that would make the British marvel,

then I will go back into my heart,

search it deep and well,

and find all the places I have left in the depths of time,

and one of these will be the windowsill,

wreathed in the romance

of a girl of twenty-one who doesn't quite

feel like a woman yet,

yet still too old for her own skin.

At 10 PM, when the lights go out

and the university buildings across the road

watch with the comforting blackness

of a blanket-fort on a stormy night,

that windowsill held such a charm.

Turning out the lights, the girl

collects her blankets and pillows and crawls

onto the sill and there curls up, the windows open

to the occasional hum of a car as she looks

out across the roofs

painted with a black brush,

then up

into a sky clouded

with the purple pollution of watchful streetlights,

and there are no stars,

no moon, no planets, except this one,

and behind her back her songs fill her room

with feigned life sealing her into a pocket

between windows and music,

and the beat reverberates in her heart as she searches the sky,

but there are no stars.

Until

a little light

white in the dark,

flashes on her phone beside her head — a silent message,

and she smiles

and closes her eyes

and lets the beat carry her

to that little star that nobody can see but she.

And so I will look out across those fjords and mountains

and there will be a galaxy of stars

so close that I can hold them gently in my palms

and feel their warmth and know with a certainty bought with time:

I have been loved.

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Written by: Katrine Hjulstad

Instagram: @katrinehjulstad

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Publisher's note: Please note that all poetry published with Eudaemonia Records has been seen by our editors, and that the editors have suggested revisions where they see fit, but we believe that it is ultimately the writer's decision to accept or reject any suggestions and take no responsibility for which suggestions they accept or reject.