Charming etcetera

I

An apple tumbles from the cart, rolls to a stop at my feet. But the fruitman is quicker — he scoops it up like a lioness gathering her cubs, ending playtime. Later, I pass a shop window and spot an iMac shaped like an apple. I wonder what would happen if I sank my teeth into its plastic body, whether some electrical juice might still ooze from its fresh scars. There are things I know now that I wish I didn’t. Or maybe they were never mine to know. I live on a screen, and sometimes, in the real world; where Mum wears purple scarves that vanish into lavender fields (when she’s not hunting spiders) and Dad holds the stripy towel marked with lanes of pink, blue, orange, and yellow, spread out across sand, sun-warmed rock, blistering tarmac, and plastic pool stretchers that reek faintly of chlorine. The real world, if I understand anything at all, is a place where one meets roundabout after roundabout. 

II

A bridge is being cooled by sprinklers. Men in neon vests wink and sigh, the yellow burning holes in my vision. While they sprinkle, girls dance the jitterbug like it’s 1954. Their hair swings in synchrony, like pendulums measuring an earthquake. The continuation and the ending of time wrap themselves around me; wrapped like the halloumi and lettuce from yesterday, eaten on my balcony, the world blinking below. The tomato kept slipping out and it was okay. Back then, I was still a girl with strawberry-blonde hair and H&M clothes, reciting Lana Del Rey lyrics like scripture. How catastrophic is it this time? 

III

I’ve come to find that cramped spaces make me forget everything I’ve done throughout the day, the scarcity of room compromising the creative output of my brain. My longest walk is from the living room table to the coffee machine. Five steps, to be precise. I’d rather be in that hotel room; the one overlooking the Amsterdam canals. I passed it once, a guy in aviator glasses smoking a joint by the window. Bug eyes, bug eyes, my mind plays this like a kids’s song. Tourists, after consulting TikTok, queue for fries. I’ve lost my wand, or no; I’ve lost my wings. The sun has teeth. The fries smell like vinegar and hot metal. It’s too much, but it’s also all I have; someone else’s Thursday; my torn diaries, now hanging in museums; my Atlantis, called to brilliance. Mad sounds are braided into the summer air. Can you hear them? Maybe it’s a promise. 

Naomi Ronner is a bilingual writer of poetry and fiction in Dutch and English. She’s interested in how identity takes shape across body, place and time, and in the ways these are all connected. 

Follow her on Instagram @naomironner

Parts 4 to 6 of Charming will be published next week

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