Watch your step

This piece was written for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of raconteurs, writers, artists, philosophers, flaneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month STSC members create something around a set theme. This cycle, the theme was “Isolation.”

“Watch your step

There are snakes on the island"

In the tall grass that has never met the blade

Sunbathing on stones and beds of pebbles

The owner—who will lose his boat tomorrow–

Keeps the tidbit off the advert:

Romance, seclusion, no internet, no nothing

A perfect paradise for two

For an extra price of course

A hot tub with salt water and algae

That no filter could handle

"Come we must prepare the cabin

For our dear guests who need privacy

Clean bed sheets, cutlery, some firewood

To keep them warm

Couples don’t really need that

But we must provide"

What if they have a fight

What if they start hating each other

What if they end up murdering one another

With a blunt knife sticky with lingonberry jam

Agatha Christie style but with no Sven Hjerson

The poor man’s Poirot

To pick up the pieces

To retrace the steps

In a place with no cameras

No convenient witnesses

Just snakes and a salt water hot tub

"Oh, it happens more often than you’d think

Not our problem really

An article in the press – yes

But tourists don’t read Swedish”