\nA suitcase was left outside De Haven van Texel,
\nclose to the water’s edge.
\nI’m calling the bomb squad, whispered a sunburnt man.
\nWhat does that even mean, said his wife.
\nThe police.
\nYou don’t speak Dutch, she sighed.
\nTell the waiters.
\nPffffffft, you saw how long it took to get our drinks.
\nThe man tapped the suitcase with his shoe, in rhythm to the accordion player’s song.
\nLeave it alone.
\nThe man pushed harder, the suitcase’s wheels rolled forward,
\npast the barrier,
\ninto the water
\nwith a deafening splash that was heard across the city.<\/p>\n
Ne me quitte pas<\/strong> Les Bourgeois<\/strong> Fernand<\/strong> Orly<\/strong> J’arrive<\/strong> ABOUT THE AUTHORS<\/strong> Tineke De Meyer<\/strong> studied comparative literature at the University of Ghent. She has followed her interest in stories mainly through dramaturgy and theatre. Since 2014 Tineke has regularly worked with artist collective Circumstance, investigating dialogues between print, sound and environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You see yellow snakes in the water. In the fifth of the Duos series, new poetry by Thomas McMullan and Tineke De Meyer<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89770"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91342,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89770\/revisions\/91342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nLove has been the law for her lifetime, and she was rotting in jail.
\nLunch and dinner came on metal trays, slid through a hatch in the door.
\nBreakfast was spoonfed by the most beautiful hand she had ever seen.
\nOr perhaps
\nshe had only grown accustomed to it
\nover time, lending its tender fingertips associations of morning sustenance.
\nSometimes she would overhear the sounds of sex,
\nthen she would clench her eyes and hope
\nthat the owner of the hand was not involved.
\nShe would imagine the ceiling of her cell was an open window,
\nfacing the moon.<\/p>\n
\nPork medallions were the order of the day.
\nAbsolutely everyone was after them,
\nand the kitchen had sweat itself to skin and bones over the pressure.
\nOne dishwasher had taken
\nto openly snorting cocaine on the dirty pots and pans.
\nOn the restaurant floor the sound of chewing had knitted itself
\ninto a golden cloak; absolutely exhausting to listen to.
\nThe ma\u00c3\u00aetre d’h\u00c3\u00b4tel had lost so much weight that he collecting coats with one hand,
\nholding his trousers up with the other.
\nFor a fleeting moment he found himself staring at the list of reservations,
\nconvinced he’d written his own name.<\/p>\n
\nIt’s not because you don’t feel sick that there’s no cancer there.
\nWhat then is there to hope for? Well.
\nYou could just say that it’s not raining.
\nBut it is.
\nYou see two boys standing in the open bedroom window on the fifth floor,
\ntheir backs towards you. An angry man comes in.
\nOne boy loses his balance – one.
\nFalling backwards, he grabs and pulls the other boy with him – two.
\nWitnessing this, the bare-chested young lover
\nhiding under the bed impulsively crawls out underneath
\nand jumps right after them – three.
\nLike a witless hero.
\nAs if one falling body could be saved by another.
\nThe boys you are able to catch.<\/p>\n
\nIt’s easy to crush a soul,
\nbut how to elevate it?
\nWhat’s keeping you here? The twilight is a sort of grey here,
\nand the sky doesn’t seem as vast as elsewhere.
\nYou see a dark man approaching a girl,
\nsitting next to a freshly covered grave,
\nwith dirty hands and bleak skin.
\nHe looks at her. You wonder how a face can look stupid
\nand guilty at the same time.
\nShe’s not waiting for his judgement. There is nothing to be learned from her.
\nWe watch him dig and uncover the face of his father.
\nIt’s skin is barely discernible from the damp, warmly coloured soil.
\nNow he changes his grip on the spade,
\nholding it like a hammer.
\nThen, he shatters the head.
\nTurning it to dust.
\nWith ease.<\/p>\n
\nYou’re distracted.
\nHow would you even know your suffering is real
\nif you’re so easily distracted?
\nYou don’t. Look: there’s a masculine woman of small posture,
\nbig eyes. She reaches out to touch your face,
\nthen your neck. You let her. You wait.
\nShe bends your head back. You wait.
\nYou always do. She takes hold of your arms.
\nYou let her. She makes you descend into a pool.
\nYou see yellow snakes in the water.
\nYou feel yellow snakes in the water.
\nWhat do you feel? You feel fear.
\nYou understand that you have waited too long.
\nThis is not what you wanted, you say.
\nBut it was, she says. Look around you.
\nYou know what to do.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/tomandtineke-e1512923402231.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nThomas McMullan<\/strong> is a London-based writer. He has been published by Lighthouse, 3<\/em>:AM Magazine, The Stockholm Review<\/em> and Cours de Po \u00e9tique<\/em>, and is a contributing editor for minor literature[s]. He has written for the Guardian, Frieze, The TLS<\/em> and New Statesman<\/em>, and is published in Best British Short Stories 2016<\/em>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/tomandtineke-e1512923402231-400x179.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nYou feel yellow snakes in the water.
\nWhat do you feel? You feel fear.
\nYou understand that you have waited too long.
\nThis is not what you wanted, you say.
\nBut it was, she says. Look around you.
\nYou know what to do. <\/p>\n