Houseboat Days
March 17th, 2026
The words were familiar, like a body I used to touch and know. I might have read them before. I might have read this book before. I don't remember doing it. I don't remember the title or particular poems, yet they felt already known. Like I knew what phrase was coming after the first one, and reading the broken-line rhythms felt like an instinct. Each word in its exact position and their succession in each line felt comfortably correct. I felt quiet but unfocused. I didn't have to be focused, as I said — poems felt familiar, and I could recognize the pattern. I could see the whole page at one glance, and I could read all the words at one glance. But one glance was not enough. I lazily moved my eyes from line to line, going top to bottom and back. Until one verse —
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The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind
Then I stopped and focused myself. I repeated the verse several times in my head. Then several times out loud. Then, in a whisper, rolling each word on my lips enough times until I felt the weight of importance of those words pressed on them. It felt like a houghty kiss, stolen unexpectedly, but welcomed anyway. I rolled my head, expecting more, but nothing else came. I started thinking and feeling in prose, so I stopped reading.
