^{translated from the Danish by Jennifer Russell and Sophia Hersi Smith}

On my childhood street
lives an old woman
who remembers me
as a little girl.
I was unruly
she says
the whole building shook
when I bounded down
the stairs from the fourth floor.

This picture of me
inserts itself
and distorts
like when
a photograph is taken
on top of another.

I fear the place
I hold in other people’s
memory. They remind me
of things I have forgotten.

They stole
my face
before it was
worn out
and wear it often
on top of their own.

I don’t remember
the old woman
from my childhood
the grown-ups were all the same
and ageless.
She knows something
about me she won’t divulge
a secret I’ve never told.

It fills her up
and keeps death at bay
she tells lies and intends
to outlive me.
I never took the stairs in bounds
I was a quiet child.
I hate her.