My house in Argentina had been occupied. I went there to shoo out the intruders. The flight alone took eighteen hours, with changes in Miami and Brasilia, but at last I arrived. My new lodgers were a group of orphaned teenagers who called themselves Escapistas. They asked me to recite a poem in my language, my other language, that is, Swedish. I read aloud from Tomas Tranströmer's Baltics, which I always kept in my hand luggage in case my thoughts grew too clamorous. They asked how I lived back home in Sweden. I described my studio flat with its kitchenette, strewn with stucco and vinyl records. They asked for pictures. I showed them a few, and they swiped through picture after picture on the screen. The leader, a freckled boy with a bass voice, asked whether I wanted to have the house styled, because it really was in a sorry state, even for bohemians. I mean, we're embarrassed when we bring people here, he said. I explained that I would think about it, but first they needed to leave, because it is hard to bring rooms to order when they contain a quintet of drunken poets with questionable hygiene. A small girl with a squint, who had sat quietly throughout the conversation, then asked the question that sent a cold shiver down my spine. She smiled slyly as she delivered the words: But if you're here, who's in your flat?

I had had inklings before, but now things became serious in earnest. The roots were pulled out by the roots. The end came to an end in the end. Here was now here and now. It was the eternal return returning and returning. And returning. It wasn't funny any more, what was funny was no longer funny, any longer. This is how it can feel when it's like this, you said, just like that, as though we were to have it like this. I needed to start again and start again and start again and start. Just start.

You think I'm interesting

now

When you run inside me

what do you see

I really wonder

what you see

when you run inside me

Our monologue. You wanted to talk about it. So yes, you did.

I needed an identity and found yours. It was out there on the internet. And I liked myself as you.

how do we find ourselves

here

here we find ourselves

how

how do I mean

here

here I am always

true

The cars chase like fish at play

across the bridges that never fall

in the silence that never has room,

until it has all the room.

You want me like a budgie that is sometimes allowed to fly around the flat but only sometimes because the budgie must know what the budgie cannot have access to.

I needed practice, so I wrote.

A line like the one above.

Or like this one.

It's the only way, I thought.

Just to write.

Almost anything.

Like claiming that horses chew the cud.

Or ending a text without meaning,

halfway through a sen...