Inamorata
Girija Tropp

The post office is in the ruins of the old city. No one comes here now because this is the place from which dreams rise. A saviour will be born here. What he will do is not clear. Being saved is an idea to devour the meek.
Artists camp out, eager for the scenic headtrip that begins with astonishingly rapid sunrises. Markets and festivals spring up on weekends. Murals cover the walls on every cobblestoned laneway. The images leading to the post office are intense and abstract; acid dreams. I can look all day and not tire. In a field that has grown over several streets, a tramp with rainbow-colored dreads throws a ball to a sausage dog. I feel as if I am moving past on an escalator, a tourist.
I am standing under the clock tower. My sister's lover lives here. He owns the place. The granite lips of a statue in the central atrium have cracked and turned the smile bitter. The office cubicles, vaulted and gloomy, the guts of this bureaucratic cathedral like a stamp issued by the Queen of the Night. In the midst of such eerie glory, I feel like an intruder. In one corner, I see my son. I know it is not him but the shape of my imagination. He is upside down, walking on his hands. The tattooed girl comes out of the shadows and jumps towards him, lands on his neck. I hear the snap of breaking bone. They say it is impossible to walk in here and pretend to be someone else. To the right, there is a small door and I glide towards it. There will be a way of accessing the living quarters upstairs.
On the other side of a heavy baize-covered door, there are stairs, painted light and dark in such a way as to create an illusion, Schroder stairs. There is damp; I can smell it. Halfway up, I feel nausea, and I also see, as if an object is rising out of a blind spot, my sisterŐs presence. A blink and there is nothing there. I would like to sit down where I am and take pleasure in being still. Tails of light fall from above. The unknown like a loan shark.