Hotel Garden, the Frozen Fountain
I can see steam rising from the paper cup. The warmth reaching my palm is only about that much. The winter sunlight is bright but not warm. The fountain's water has frozen white, and the bird perched on its rim doesn't fly off when someone approaches. I stood in front of it a moment. The words from meetings that have gone on for days circle in my head, then stop on the ice. Like a drop at the tip of an icicle that seems about to fall and doesn't, I too am swallowing some word. I sit on the bench and take a sip of coffee. Already lukewarm. The bird turns its head and looks this way. We keep exactly the distance at which we don't disturb each other. The frozen water makes no sound at all, and that silence, if anything, rings in the ears. Wind brushed the branches behind the fountain. The bird spreads its wings once and folds them again. I finish the coffee and stay sitting there, the empty cup in my hand. Now and then there is time when it's fine to be stopped like this.
To you, in the winter garden even the birdsong is locked away and only frozen water remains. The silence of the place where you stay resembles the winter air of the alley where I live. Standing in the yard where I've brought out a blanket, the wind brushes past my ears. Drinking warm tea and looking out the window, like your coffee going cold, I too sit inside a time grown still. May the words you swallowed sink beneath the ice, and stay there like that.
It's an afternoon when I suddenly understand why the bird doesn't fly away. Like the blanket laid out in the yard of your alley, the old ice at the fountain's edge holds a warmth of its own. At the speed at which cooling things recognize one another, I slowly rose from that spot and returned to the hotel lobby. On the way back, a single drop at the tip of an icicle finally fell and touched the ground.