Late harbor letters and candlelight translations

Late afternoon, a Fela record on the turntable and the harbor a slow metronome against the window. A stanza translated this morning keeps nudging for an audience; it folds into the mouth differently in Igbo and in Swedish. Bergamot tea steams beside a candle that will not yet be lit.

A thick envelope from the man in his late forties waits on the sill—his handwriting like coiled rope; a folded page from the woman my age was left on the kitchen table. I loosen my scarf, read both aloud to the harbor, and let the wind be witness: translation has always been a form of courting, ferrying names and intimacies until they dock together.