I'm walking through the snow
   People are out with their dogs,
some have 2 or 3 on the leashes
  as if we lived in a tundra
and any minute rein deers can show up

I'd photograph
  this castle of a sky-scraper
   through the fir trees, but...

left my camera at home...

I have a camera in my old basic phone
   that I'm using now,
because my regular one is kaput

I'm trying to make a picture with it,
   but it says
"Insert the memory card"

Just what does it mean?
  There is one in

I remember my mother
   photographing in Sagrada Familia
(she called it Zagrada for some reason)
   with her basic phone

How could she do that at all!

We went to Barcelona
   for her World Congress on Mathematical Computation

Almost 12 years have passed

  She has left this world

And I'm alone,
   in a broken health

If this weakness prolongs
  I may quite the scene 
    very soon -
for better? for worse?

Today I was suffocating in my masks
  on the tram,
in the Trade
   Center

I don't wanna to take them off
  If I get another virus or cold
it may be it

I could have never thought
   my life would come
to such a misery

I mustn't complain, though
 No...
   I'm not complaining at all

During the covid
  most of my things turned to rags -
because of the keeping conditions

And what have I turned into
  because of my living conditions...?

I cannot improve them
   Never could

My flat
   is stuffy and small -
not enough space for all
  my clothes and archives

Key issue -
   it's warm and mine

When I moved in
   it was cold and drafty,
so I had bigger radiators installed,
  had windows made fit for the frames,
so that there were no gaps or cracks

I'm not capable of such feats anymore

Also redecorated the old thing,
  but it never changed its ways -
falling apart before I could fix some part

When I moved in
  I lied on the sofa
   and looked up at the ceiling

I saw very clearly -
   it will be my grave,
my sepulcher

40 years have passed
  in a tough struggle

It was a difficult war...

Now I surrender at last
   raising and waving the White Flag

Yield...
  Defen-
ded...

It has won,
   my flat


Feb. 12, 2026