Now you have to get comfortable with sitting and sinking.

So much air to breathe!

When we speak, I hope to form sentences full of misbeliefs, and you would be there to correct me.

I am in waves, and you are still.

youth-struck!

I think I can finally call you, but not only my dad, but a mythical father, the one who carries clandestine truths in his beard.

I see something runs in your face. A pebble-bug that weighs down parts of your face. It’s here and there in your lower lip, or sometimes in your left nostril.

There, there, that something that pulls parts of your face closer to the ground. Then your eyes look somewhere behind my shoulder.

Your eyes that always sought endlessness, now you are face to face with the near. You’ve become shortsighted,

and now I want to put your picture in my wallet and carry it with me.

Flesh is all around you.

Her eyes avoid you with such determination it almost feels like an eye contact.

It pierces you and turns you into something that is known as an unknown.

Her very tinted veins are a physical representation that she feels.

On New Year's Eve, I entered the only boys' room in our house.

She was on the bed and tiny.

In our house, all the beds are big, somehow massive, with bed frames that will absorb you.

And in every bed, from all the three massive beds, my sister looks so small in all of them.

These beds are somehow bigger than I’ve seen in other households, not in a good way at all.

Like in a whale-ish way, in a way that they are just there and mocking you, for you will never be able to move them. And all the times you would want to use that plug that is excessively pressed by them, you will decide that you will not charge your phone that night at all.

Those are the beds that always win but are tragic somehow in their grandeur.

we were there. Girls in a boy's room, and it was very noticeable.

On a New Year’s Eve, where you can be idle and passing time is a chore meant for the lit part of the day, I needed to sit close to her.

I do— and she reminds me of an orthodox saint whose loose clothes deny any trace of flesh below them.

God knows how many times I’ve put my finger against her nostrils to check on her breath while she was sleeping at my side.

I don’t know if I talked to her at all.

I lie down next to her, and I put my head in her arms. She still smells the way she always has.

If she forgives me, then I would be forgiven in front of everyone.

It’s her, the smallest one, who can forgive me for all of it.

If she understands, we can breathe easier.

I needed to cry next to her.

As an apology to you, everyone that I’ve spent many days and many hours with...

If she heard me cry,

Then the urge to call up everyone I know to apologize would be resolved.

I cried next to her, and she did not ask me many questions. She asked me what it was, and I told her it was just New Year’s— that I loved so much— and it made me sad and happy and...

She laughed and hugged me and saved me from calling you.

And then light failed, and time was passed, and we sat at a table.

The fireworks, for the first time in my life, were just here and there.

I felt happy for Peshka, who was given table food undisturbed, but I could not stop thinking that little did I know the previous year that it was the last time I would see the sky explode.

I wish I had known. I was asking myself if I had enjoyed it as we enjoy things when we know they happen for the last time.

Habits fail for love, even pretty ones. And I was happy to sacrifice my customs for Peshka.

It is the time when a call sneaks in—the one that passes through, the lucky one.

I was sipping my wine, looking at faces, and hearing voices.

I love New Year’s as it is the one that comes in seconds that we count.

It has such a clear border of before and after.

I hear my mom speak to that caller.

“Yes, how strange. I'm sure it is going to be a different year from all the others. For the first time in our lives, neither me nor him have shed a single tear, can you believe it?”

I did not know crying on New Year’s Eve is what we do.

Well, it was such a strange feeling.

It was the first year for me when I cried on New Year's, and the first time for my parents when they did not...

Was it my turn?

It has never been my turn in anything .

and there I was at the borders of everything.

It is my turn, I thought.

wishing to stay there as a pure threshold.

and usually sentiments are my serpent pets.

They don’t have limbs nor joints,

non-proficient in walking,

and certainly they don’t know how to run.

They crawl to me, almost not touching the surface,

and I will perceive their presence only when cloaked in their warm sleaziness.

It will be tender,

scarfed tighter and tighter

in breaths and breaths.

But this time, no.

It came as a healing body,

but maybe without a body at all

the strongest ghost I’ve ever encountered.

It was cutting me with the least sharp object,

a stone that is not the heaviest but the fastest,

like it was made out of wind

that blew through my body, shaking all of my organs.

Like in a car when I put my head out of the window

and the intensity of life is threatening me.

I have so much air in my body

I can never exhale it.

I’m possessed and

your temper is episodic.

I’m folding and wrinkling.

I promise myself I will consider cutting my nails as a real chore.

from here on out

I will cut my nails,

when in between a finger

and a fingernail

yesterday and the day before

and all the other befores

that came even aforetime start to accumulate.

cutting nails is a real chore.

it happens to me sometimes that I need to keep

a physical reminder of what has happened to me

but I think I’m ready to

I will put a lotion on

when my skin breaks

and take care of all the blisters and shoe marks

I will wash all my clothes that carry stains

I will get rid of every physical reminder

that yesterday ever existed

and maybe then

before will start to turn into stories

instead of colored spots.

I will be patient

with all the happenings

I can’t pinpoint and

which I know are giving birth to me that I am not .

to the one that

I will

come as a memory.

This June she’s obsessing over fish and fishtanks,

creepy pastas and youtube’s unnervings.

The present is a mashed potato dish, she wants to be a part of so much,

but she’s scared of being mashed to the point of absence of essence.

Only if she could exist as a lump in this mashed potato dish.

“How can the end be already in the middle of the beginning?-asked Ummnu.”

Search for purity is not really advancing and I decided to plunge into whats now.

I really think this June is trying to communicate us with something.

It does not promise that the sun will ever come out again.

The sun will never come out again!

unless we change something?

Is this the message?

Or is it-

The sun will never come out again!

and it is too late to change anything.

“How can the end be already in the middle of the beginning?-asked Ummnu.”

The image that comes to my mind most often these days:

August morning, very hot. I, my dad and my mom all asleep on the mattresses in the living room. I wake up with a knowledge that today we are going to the sea. This is the most exciting thing that happens once each year ,throughout my childhood. My parents are still asleep. I also know that in our fridge, there Inhabit at least 5 glasses of frozen strawberry blancmanges, that my grandma prepared for us especially for this morning

We’re gonna be travelling with my dad’s light blue Opel Vectra, that (now that I think of) was a threat to his 25 year old masculinity and the social status of the same age. I knew dad would drive us as fast as light blue Opel Vectra would allow and my mom would vocalise fearsome cries and moans. I knew, I would get tingly when engaging in every road rage opportunity that would come our way. I knew, I would play a car mark guessing game, that later on in my life would develop me into a car mark expert-the skill that I’m bizarrely proud of till this day. I knew- I would listen to songs I’ve never listened before. the songs that would inhabit in my ears for some time and go away, as I was too shy to ask what their names were. I suspect, every time I listen to new music, I’m subconsciously judging it from the perspective-if this music would be played in the light blue Opel Vectra or not. Have I really ever left the light blue Opel Vectra, that was a threat to my father’s 25 year old masculinity and the social status of the same age?

“How can the end be already in the middle of the beginning?-asked Ummnu.”

The images supplied by my subconscious:

I receive a call. My phone is broken(In the waking life as well) It takes me a great deal of endeavour to hear or make myself be heard to the person over the line.It is a doctor. He informs me that my body is sick with, not one but two terminal illnesses. Which means that if by any miracle I am cured from one, the other will end me for sure and vice versa. Miracles rarely happen and for sure not two times in a row. Tranquil ride to the abyss is on! My grandma comes into my room. She makes an annoying comment about something like my appearance or my messy room or something akin to it. My sister enters my room. She gets fascinated by my new shoes. She’s examining them in excitement. I’m wondering when they’re gonna leave my room. This thought is assassinated by the following one: I don’t want them to leave my room! At all! Ever! Till the second when one of two terminal illnesses wins over the other in my termination, I wanna be witnessing Grandmas making annoying comments and little sisters obsessing over my apparel.

“How can the end be already in the middle of the beginning?-asked Ummnu.”

give me a compass for my birthday,

a clock,

a measure,

A map!

A map!

to where?

I don’t know

you decide

it has to be a surprise!

to any promised land I’ll tinkle,

by anyone who promises.

I drink coffee

from a coffee mug.

It has a map on it.

of Mallorca.

I don’t know where it is.

It looks like an island.

Is this the map that I’m given?

Ah girl, it’s a pattern again.

go ahead and box it.

In the box of magic.

Off to Mallorca.

Can’t you see we’re exhausted-

Of centralised guilt.

Of unaccompanied mistakes.

Forsaken in blame-

we open up to mysteries.

Little prayer

for being penetrated

by a weather forecast.

stormy or sunny

never! no more

deserted-

In the metropolis of choice-

a brief promenade

while

We binge on Chinese cookies.

peephole in the wall

my neighbour Ghena was a fortuneteller

Do you recognise me without my hair-clips?

I count white spots on my fingernails

12 miracles I am promised

8 accidents to see your face

what will cicadas eat if I cease to sleep?

water stays on my skin

she had a real glow up

inhabited by:

a sentiment as obscure as an inuit myth

yellow and warm

I’ll remember in fragments for a few weeks

I don’t mind sleeping through chimes of school kids

Sometimes I think everything that is built is built during these times of obscurities.

In summer afternoons nothing really counts.

I wait for the sun not to blind me anymore

for the noises of industrial bloom not to dominate over the arguments of my downstair neighbours.

I think I got used to it.

As I do each summer afternoon.

My sister plays the piano.

She never plays the piano unless a summer afternoon.

It’s obvious she’s waiting.

Maybe everything is created through waiting?

through the unintentional.

Bore your brain to death and wait for miracles.

What lays beyond waiting?

I listen to my sister play the piano out of tune.

does it count as waiting?

but nothing counts in summer afternoons.

we who strive in waiting will never wait.

I know every piece by heart and in person.

Even when her body is outside of them, they carry her presence. In all of them I

recognise her. Seeing this I question the concept of physical objects not having a soul.

Actually, this is her mom’s balcony and this is her mom’s apartment. As she

does not own anything at all, besides these clothes drying on the dryer. Neither do I.

Besides my clothes drying at my parents’ balcony on my parents’ dryer.

Everything I see around, puts in context how she has translated her mother into

her. All the beauty, all the ugliness. I enjoy.

We are at the end of spring. We should be boiling right now, but we’re not.

We’re actually chilly. It has been years since I’ve been in this town when it’s neither

hot nor cold. But I still recognise the weather. I know it in person as well. I also doubt

the fact that weather does not have a soul. I’ve experienced the same temperature,

the same humidity at the same hour, outside the borders of the place of my birth. and

it has never felt the same there. Not because of the place, but at the level of the

sensation, it has never felt the same. . So isn’t this the proof that the weather has

a soul? But What is that element exactly that makes me feel like I can greet this

weather, shake hands with, embrace?

What is that we recognise through the properties of an entity that lays beyond copy

and paste? Maybe this something can only be described with the absence of it?

Or maybe we can’t put it in words as it is the absolute? How do you describe a thing

that is nothing but the thing itself? Independent of everything else and unrepeatable?

In relation to what can we describe something when it only can be related to itself?

The absolutes are indescribable.

All I can say is that when I feel the same temperature of this late chilly spring

morning, the same humidity at the same hour. It’s not gonna be this. Maybe it’s gonna

be that but never this. And this and that are are just this and that as they are

beginning and the end. With no relation to anything else. So if you ever witness me

lose the language:

absolutes are indescribable.

ახალი ხმის გახსნა საკუთარ თავში იშვიათი სიამოვნება გახდა. ძირითადად, ყველა გაღვიძება იმით იწყება ხოლმე:”ვაი კიდე შენ ხარ”. დღეს არა. მარა იმის დადგენაც ძნელია, ეს ძველი ძველი ჩემი თავია თუ   სულ ახალი ჩემი თავი, თუ საერთოდ არ არის ჩემი თავი. არის თუ არა განსხვავება ამ ორს შორის ეგეც საკითხავია. ეს ხმა ნამვილად არ არის ის ხმა რომლითაც ვლაპარაკობ. მემგონი მაინც ის ხმაა როთიც სხვის დაწერილ რაღაცეებს ვკითხულობ ხოლმე და ვერ ვხვდები იმის მიმუხედავად რო აზრი რომელსაც ვწერ ჩემია სხვისი ხმით დაწერილი რამდენად მე გამოდის ,საბოოლოოდ. 

არ ვიცი როგორ გავაგრძელო მარა გაჩერება მეშინია. წარმოდგენა არ მაქვს ამის წერას რო მოვრჩები რა გავაკეთო. საშინაო დავალებაც არ მაქვს გასაკეთებელი და არც არაფერი სხვა. ამოუწურვადი თავისუფლება ,რომელიც ალბათ ჩემ ცხოვრებაში ყველაზე მეტად მზღუდავს. ნეტა ცხოვრების ბოლომდე მქონდეს საშინაო დავალება გასაკეთებელი. ყოველ დღე ზუსტად ვიცოდე კონკრეტულად რაში გავიყვანო დღე. ცხოვრების იმ პერიოდებში როცა ამის ფუფუნება მაქვს ისე არ ხდება რო რეალურად ვაკეთებ იმას რაც მაქვს გასაკეთებელი. უბრალოდ  აზრი რო არსებობს რაღაცეები რაც გასაკეთებელია წარმოუდგენელი კომფორტია. ალბათ ყველა იმ ხალხს როგორ გააბრაზებდა ამის წაკითხვა როცა პატარა გოგო რომელსაც ცხოვრებაში გაუმართლა იმაზე წუწუნებს რო რაც უნდა ის შეუძლია გააკეთოს ცხოვრების ნებისმიერ მომენტში. გულს მირევს მეც ეს ყველაფერი. რეალურად მე და ჩემი ძაღლი პეშკას ცხოვრებას შორის ამ მომენტში არანაირი განსხვავება არ არის. ალბათ ესეც უნდა იყოს. ერთადერთი განსხვავება ის არის რო უბრალოდ ცხოვრება მე დანაშაულის გრძნობას მიჩენს და იმას არა. იმდღეს ლოკოკინას ვუყურებდი. დიდი ხანი. მიცოცავდა ძაან ნელა. “ვაუ ეს ლოკოკინა ზუსტად იმას აკეთებს რასაც უნდა აკეთებდეს. არც მეტი არც ნაკლები, რა მაგარია!”

Last month I took an unpaid vacation= this month has not been financially solid for me. to be more precise, my budget for all the self cleaning potions- 7 euros. I went to a cut rate store knowing I would spend double time in there. However, this month money has been more expensive than time.I went directly to the hygiene section and made my eyes target the prices of the shampoos, not even looking up at the products. THERE IT WAS 2.45 EUROS. I looked up at the shampoo-it was Head and Shoulders. Heart beats fast.. Finally I’ll be in and not out. Finally everyone who would get a smell of my hair will know what I’ve been using to make my hair clean. Ah the taste of social acceptance. Many friends, many lovers…

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