the days move along as wild horses over the hill,
I dream of mould. Everytime I close my eyes, they're there.
They seem to glow this morning, emerald green, in their thousands. I can see my breath in the air. I gaze out at the green hills stretching out before us. My hands tremble and my chest rises in a shiver. It's the longest row we've cut in the five days since we've began. The dew that tumbles off the the grapes grips onto my jeans like wet rats clinging to the riverside. My bucket fills until it becomes a mountain.
How many grapes make one bottle of wine? You're drinking everything that ever touched my fingertips, humanity!
But I have orange gloves and so only the emotion wraps the vines. My breath is blue. I taste a grape. There are two pips. I spit one out and eat the other. My index finger on my left withdraws violently everytime it touches a branch, the result of a glove full of blood on the first day.
Lunch is three and a half hours away. I'll drink the sea away to ease up the muscles in my right leg, the back, the feet, the eyes full of grapes everytime I shut my eyes.
My bucket tips over. Grapes spill out onto the stone ridden ground. Yasin walks by for collection. I scoop up what has fallen out and heave it in. The 8am bones are not strong, the sun has barely risen behind the clouds, everything is grey or green or the poor mauve of rot. I reach for Simon's bucket on the other side of the bush. I nearly throw it out into the hills. It's almost empty. There is no hole and there is no grape eating beast beside him, sucking at the juice and spitting pips. I gaze at him straight in the eyes. He is a wreck. He can barely move.
'Whats happening? Do you see how far behind we are?! We're the stupid damn English who can only drink and fuck and break things, but can we at least pick grapes?' 'My hands are about to fall off...'
The night before it had stormed. Today, in the cold, the dew becomes colder, kissing at the hands as snakes sucking into a horse.
'We've got to go faster man. We're 20 metres behind and we've not even halfway through. Heave yourself into the branches, beat at the vines with sticks and bones and anything it takes to make them fall', I yell at him, I curse him.
But its no use. Everything fucks us. People finish their rows and come along speaking of les anglais. Even then we're so far behind. We're far enough behind to be dogs biting off each vine.
And the heart is of the purple juice stains on my hands, growing back again, upwards to the sky, gasping for air. It beats through my hands in the hours till lunchtime, till we finish for the week, for a fire and virginie again, if she'll touch me, breathe next to me.


The collector comes around. I don't know his name. He wears a shiny chain around his neck.
'You speak English?' he calls out. The girl like a pie next to us laughs. He repeats it next time
'O, you speak English too?', I reply the third time, grinning.
His face falls.
This time, we finish ahead of everyone. We had drank the wine and eaten the pasta and the cake and the two cups of coffee for lunch. Nobody else could be as powerful and quick as us in the afternoon.
Then it rained and I got so angry that I could spit, when come 5pm the manager took us to a different vineyard in Sancere. We finish at 5. It stormed and we worked the hills for another half an hour. I could see nothing through my glasses. He spoke to everyone about grapes on the floor and cursed the english for not being able to understood. Even demi chat could understand this, shitting next to the litter every evening..He tries to explain. Je comprend, je comprend. Arrette. Alle! Anything to make him leave with his whistling at the top of the hill with his waterproof trousers on and me in my drenched sticky jeans.
I don't do it anyway. I can see nothing through my misted glasses and care only for warmth right now. I leave the leaves in with the grapes.
'Le vin et tea!'
I grin and shrug. My blood has already gone into your wine, this year, monsieur.

Its so wonderful to be able to sit, sometimes.