In an ugly yellow shopping bag
there lie four plates
an empty word blue written on them.
One of them is cracked
another one has a manufacture stain on its face.
One would say what an ugly set of plates
bought for 3,5€ two years and a half ago.
We were skint and broke when we arrived here.
They shut us in a 24 m2 flat,
couldn't buy a pan or a cooking pot.
I found one in a cupboard
with a burnt bottom
used it for a while.
We had no duvet to tuck in
so for a few days we used our overcoats instead.
We had mould in abundance
black thriving mould all around us
that ended up ruining our shoes.
Since then
my husband had been sick,
we have changed the flat and moved
from that disgusting old neighbourhood
and went far away so that the mould
would not eat us alive,
we have changed more than a few badly paid jobs,
we have had a son who smells of linen and milk,
we have managed to stay alive and well.
Since then
I have learnt that you can destroy past in your dreams;
hell, you can even cast spells in your dreams.
I dreamt of that flat,
in my dream I decided it has never really existed.
It has never happened.
In my dream, thick dust fell
all over those wretched 24 m2,
all over that stinky toilet where shit got stuck more than once,
all over that mouldy shower plate
until nothing could be seen,
until the flat and the entire building disappeared.
I felt as a ripe pomegranate
ready to explode and expand its seed
until one day I saw those four plates
and it all came back to me;
the smell of vomit and iodine
the acid in our stomach
the despair and loyalty.
Black mould.
Four hideous alarming plates
that sat on a shelf and stared
with its broken edge and that stupid stain.
I observed them for weeks
trying to explain to myself
that it had never actually happened,
how those 3,5€ were like 30€ today,
you shouldn't throw away something
you earned with blood.
It went so until I couldn't cope anymore,
I said fuck, it has to go.
I threw them in the garbage
far away from our home,
those wretched despicable plates
that I would never eat my food from
'cause what we ate during that one year
was the blackest mould
I have ever seen on the walls and our souls.
I threw them away
'cause that wasn't us,
'cause dust swallowed it all.
Now there is no proof left
nothing left
and I can easily say
that the metal taste in my soul
was just a nightmare
from two years and a half ago.
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