laia sales merino

          back in the village

          la casa was always filled with people

          wherever you went there was someone next to you

her sisters, her brothers, her parents, her friends

Isa Robert Maica Elena Marcela Fede Luís Maria Miguel Federico Josep Inés —

     noisy gallinas and rabbits gordos outside

horses and cows and also pixapins with second homes in the valley 

          they would play en el bosque hide and seek 

          build their own palace out of branches 

          they would eat bread with sugar and wine to make it sweet

For breakfast it was milk, that my mother heated up on la estufa and then inside, that’s where we’d put the stale bread... This was our ‘cereal and milk’: hard bread and milk, which we got in Cal Silis, and my mother would boil it two or three times before giving it to us.

When she boiled la llet, then it made cream… A thick layer that she gave to me or, you know, to anyone who liked it. When I was there in Barcelona, sometimes if she knew I was coming on the weekend she would keep it for me. Then you would spread it on the bread as well and put a little bit of sugar on top.

Sometimes, for berenar, with the loaf of bread we did a third with water, a third with wine and a third with oil. And so it became a very colourful loaf and it would seem yo que sé qué [chuckles] 

is a poet from the Catalan Pyrenees, currently based in Barcelona. Her work can be found in Ambit, harana poetry, I’ll Show you Mine Journal, and perhappened, among others.