An unused piece of paper,

causally torn off a notebook page,

is open for suggestions

as long as it isn't polluted/embellished

with calculations

the strength of a Nobel Prize,

rumours of war

or novelist Sirkka Laine's list of grocery items

to purchase at the country store in Vuoriniemi

one summer day in 1985

with me, Sune & Suoma

at the Porkala summer cottage by Lake Saimaa,

intoxicated with love

that we naively expected to last indefinitely,

the beers cooled in a natural well,

Shivkumar Sharma's santoor version

of a North Indian raga,

that we renamed Raga Karjala,

on Sune's cassette player out on the porch

- but as soon as the space

that's been so free, so open, so virgin

is utilized,

whether with groundbreaking discoveries/inventions

or absentminded board meeting doodles

or this poem,

and the love has been duly tarnished,

the undecided future & the active now

are transformed into a rigid past

that we can ponder

but not change, in essence,

except through old Russian Communist-style retouching,

so the eternal love by Lake Saimaa

is dead but in diaries and distorted memories,

and so is Sirkka, I hear,

since 3rd October 2023,

no matter how feverishly I fill the margins

with ever smaller letters.

So I crumple the paper in my hand

and throw it in the waste basket

with a gesture of disgust