Stella Pierides
Other Worlds
I had been walking for hours. Hungry, thirsty, sweat dripping down my
face, I was hardly capable of thinking, or imagining, my usual past-times.
Yet, here it was, in front of me, an impossible sight, a mirage. What else
could this door-frame be in the middle of fields, in the center of the
Peloponnese?
The air around me was hot, suffocating, as if half of the baked earth had
floated upwards and was now swimming in it; it resonated thick with the
sound of cicadas. The relentless sun had been plaguing me all morning. And
it was the sun – more than anything else – that made me sit under that
frame; on the thin band of shade it provided.
Resting my head on my knees, I lost consciousness. I don't know how
long I was out, but when I came to the frame was casting an elongated
shadow.
Getting up, I felt my knees stiffen. I took a closer look. I could now see
this 'thing' was not really a door frame. It was carved out of a kind of
wood I had not seen before, of a tree I'd never encountered in my life.
Puzzled I touched it lightly. It moved! Alarmed, I jumped back. It stopped
moving. I started feeling the frame for clues.
At the top right hand corner I traced something protruding, something like
a splinter or a thin nail. I pulled gently. A slight breeze brushed my
face, as if a door had been opened. I could smell jasmine, lemon and tar
all mixed up; the Aegean sea! I heard the cries of sea-gulls and the
flutter of their wings. A door had really been opened to another world.
doors –
butterflies
on wild thyme
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