It's New Year's Eve 2023 – 2024,
and I'm downstairs
keeping the fire in the wood stove burning
and the cold at bay in this winter land,
flipping through your old CD:s,
most of which I have copied for you,
at the beginning of our relationship;
Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen,
and amongst them I find some archival CD:s
with photographs from long before we met

You are slightly ill with a cold,
withdrawn today upstairs,
to a room we call ”the studio”,
where we hide when we're not well
and need peace and quiet,
where you sit by a table today,
piecing a complicated jigsaw puzzle together,
your concentration and focus hovering

Going from picture to picture
I see you show jumping horses,
breeding trotters
and working in stables

...and I who believed your life began
when I showed up...

I see you in the maternity ward,
your son and later your daughter,
many years ago;
a sleek husband
whom you met studying sociology

...and I who thought your life began
when I appeared on the farm...

I see you climbing the mountains
of Lapland as a teenager,
with your Mom and uncle Bruno,
long before I did those things

and I see you and your husband
rebuilding a bus- and truck garage
into a stable
when you and he moved here,
to the farm,
at the beginning of time

and I realize
that I've just arrived,
a measly thirteen years ago,
to the lastest version of you,

until recently fooled by my own assumption
that your life began
when I had the decency to show up...

when in fact it was my life that started...