Marta Owczarek - Against the Brain

The world has many ends. They are always present in the air of the bordertowns, long before you see them; they saturate the feel and look of places they touch.

One is a port, where like in many others streets are of stone and houses crammed together in case of a flood or high tide. The tram tracks serve as lanterns, they reflect the sun at late hours of night otherwise known as dawn. They lead up the street, the street tilts up slightly as well, and opens up to the salted windy void at its end, encrusted with palm trees. This end has no decadence; the fishermen and jewellery makers live in peace and run their errands slowly, eat long meals to celebrate joys of life, and to fish out the skeleton remains of their environmentally-condemned dinners. The waves are particularly diagonal because of the two end seas combining, but it all happens naturally like they were a golden marriage melted together by the finest makers in town. The old people are wise and happy and the young happy and wise. Their tongues sway because of gravity, but you can still understand when they say they love their sand, and how good it is to see the sea. Their vowels speed up and jump around when there's talk of distance; lie down and stretch lazily when facts from the town's history are mentioned. The consonants don't do much, they persist in that tradition and will only perhaps speak when the edge turns back and the tides slide into the streets.

It's just the sunsets that are unsettling, and you can't stop yourself from wondering where do they go.