CULTURE

ANDREA

a

summer with its easy wins

summer with its plans

made at the drop of a hat

everyone’s willing

to give in to warmth

the holiday is today

let’s seize it

go through summer’s open doors

and its garden shadows

the first freezing gust of wind

is easily dismissed

summer an abyss of hope

in which year after year

you collapse ever downward

summer the warmest of life’s seasons

z

summer

summer

Beginning

it’s light out I tell you

there’s still lots more

my beautiful bird

is far away I can see it

flying away again

I love without being loved

Human

to A

I’m at 2130 metres above sea level

This story took place on the New Year’s Eve of my last winter in Bulgaria. Together with my wife and daughter, I greeted 1997 in a rented one-bedroom apartment in a windy, ugly suburb of Varna. I don’t remember this day to have heralded аnything new and different for us.

There’s someone you have not yet met:

He wears three mittens in crimson red.

His furry coat – so soft it feels;

his socks have holes on all five heels.

He’s always hiding in the pantry;

details of his life are scanty.

In the dark he quietly moves,

munching on some sugar cubes

and frolicking in secrecy

when no one else is there to see.

A tiny cockroach he has tamed;

this land of jars he has reclaimed,

and he is the lonely lord

to all that people here have stored --

I. The Eternal City

Chapter Three: The Frogs

“A RETIRED PEDIATRICIAN LOOKING TO MEET a modest and respectful woman. Dad, are you sure about this ad?”

“Seeking to meet sounds better, right?”

“Yes, seeking to meet is better, but what I meant was…”

“Should I put my age down as well? I did write I was retired.”

“You’re still young at sixty-eight, so you better write that down, but I meant the rest of it.”

“Well, what is it? Don’t make me drag it out of you! You keep nagging me to meet somebody, and now… should I leave the pediatrician part out? Should I not write that I’m a doctor at all?”

She remembered the day she went to the hair salon. She hadn’t dyed her hair in four years, and hadn’t gotten a drastic haircut in three. She explained in detail everything she had read on the charity’s website – before being cut, hair had to be sectioned into small ponytails, secured with rubber bands and then carefully placed in a transparent snaplock bag. It mustn’t be wasted.

Sometimes, Lola and I would take out a bunch of covers and blankets out on the porch and spend the night under the stars. We arranged them in such a way that only the end of the small awning was above us and then we lay down and gazed at the night sky. Whenever we looked at it for more than a minute or two, Lola panicked that she would “fly away.” That’s exactly what she said – that she was afraid of flying away, and I tried to harbor that fear with me, to feel it and share it with her.