HOLLOW ENOUGH TO HIDE AN ECHO Poem by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld

We weren't allowed to ask any questions but could invent answers, Mama cried
lots in the time when we were not yet a meter and she taught us that death had an echo
that rang deep inside your eardrums, I kept forgetting to stick my cold
hands in my pockets, not to make a fist but flat

the way I let them fall upon the glass pane of my brother's coffin like two
damp starfish, the sea suddenly found itself above our heads
someone had shoved the floor away and not replaced it said Grandpa who
made doves of my fears: to tame them

should I have stroked them from head to tail and once a week let them loose in
the field behind the stall, watching as they flew away? But at night they tapped
again with their beaks against the bedroom window, in panic Grandpa called the local plumber
because there were holes in his grandchildren, they were leaking liters of tears.

Then, consolation was just like parking, to measure is to know and still sometimes
your estimation is too narrow, you continue searching for the right place, sometimes an embrace
can also require several circles around each other. On the table tea cups stood
filled with gin, strange fingers stirred ice cubes making a cheerful

tinkling while death had yet to make a sound, just as answers need a couple
of seconds to land in the heads of an audience, were
we the audience here or did we need other people's pockets to feel
the warmth of another body? I took a forefinger and opened my mouth, just stir it I

thought then let us pretend that we want to grab each other though we keep
slipping away, withdrawal meant that the sound did not enter everyone in the same
way, those not hollow enough to hide an echo.

Beside the preacher stood the dentist, the only man in our lives who knew
everything that got between our teeth and understood that at night our ears
became seashells in which we heard not the rushing of the sea but the dead
brother, constantly in our hearts, being driven up again.