She asks me if I’ve ever wanted to live differently.
If we swapped wardrobes, would I change my hairstyle? My walk? My intonation? My diet? My reading habits? My attitudes?
I imagine myself in her eyes, myself in her clothes, myself in her footsteps. Myself in her skin. And vice versa.
This morning, after waking up, I put on my right slipper and her left one, and I walk down the cold hallway into another warm day, reminding myself that our phone calls used to last for hours or mean nothing at all. If we had each finished our own pair of shoes back then, would we have left feeling lighter? Each in our own way? Would we have eased each other’s fear for the other?
A year ago
We meet by the stove and burn love letters that were never really love letters, only referring to a time when the first intimate relationships happened. I fulfill this extra task, yet instead of a cleansing ritual, I discard a neutral past. Far less neutral is our meeting, sister next to sister, needle next to needle. When we were little, our grandmother taught us both how to crochet. Here and now, we are crocheting shoes. Just one pair. It’s an automatic activity running in the background of our lives.
“Why don’t you wear them?” my daughter asks me today.
“Do we wear the shape of the other?”
She asks in vain. We’re only sisters, after all.
________with Iva Chmelíková _________
Exhibition Permanent Farewell 10.12.-20.12.2024 in the OKNO gallery, on the facade of the building at Přímá Street 75, Prague 5.
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