She blocked three people this week.
Possibly for breathing incorrectly.
The criteria remained private.
Which is fair.
Every artist deserves boundaries.
Even mysterious ones.
Meanwhile
her profile continued expanding.
Another publication.
Another festival.
Another photograph
standing thoughtfully
near literature.
I admired the efficiency.
Most of us spend years
trying to become ourselves.
She had already hired management.
At night
I imagined a vast invisible museum
containing everyone
who had accidentally disappeared
from her followers list.
Teachers.
Former friends.
A man who once used
the wrong emoji.
Someone insufficiently enthusiastic
about a metaphor
involving moonlight.
They wander the halls quietly
holding complimentary brochures
wondering what happened.
Admission remains free.
May 19
May 19, 2026 at 7:16 PM UTC
At 1am I read a poem
about a girl licking gelato
off someone's spoon.
Then one about David.
The statue.
Cracking under a pink sky.
Florence at night.
The poet is twenty-five.
I scroll back up.
Read the same line four times.
“Attention is my currency.”
I put my phone on the kitchen table.
The kettle is cold.
Has been for hours.
He has another poem about mirrors.
About becoming what people need.
About disappearing into reflections.
I understand that.
Because I have been twenty-five
and still don't know how to say
“I am cold”
without apologizing first.
Outside, Belgrade is quiet.
Somewhere in America
a guy is writing about David cracking
and wolves in forests
and gelato on spoons.
He thinks he is a monster.
He is not a monster.
He is twenty-five.
That's worse.
My neighbor upstairs
drops something heavy again.
Humanity survives loudly.
I close the phone.
The kettle is still cold.
I should probably boil it.
I should probably sleep.
I should probably stop reading
his poems at 1am.
But his voice sounds like someone
trying very carefully
not to disappear.
And I recognize that.
Because I own three blankets
for emotional emergencies
and still forget to text people back.
The kettle finally starts screaming
from the stove.
Somewhere in America
a twenty-five-year-old man
is probably apologizing
for wanting to be loved too much.
I pour the water anyway.
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 6:22 PM UTC
He reracks weights carefully.
That's how attraction begins now.
At twenty, I wanted chaos.
Beautiful destructive men.
Human cigarettes.
Now I watch a man disinfect equipment thoroughly
and think:
yes.
protect me psychologically.
He is enormous.
Quiet.
Kind to staff.
The kind of man who says "drive safe"
and means it with his whole chest.
I see him every Thursday.
We nod at each other
like two emotionally complicated wolves
forced into administrative coexistence.
Once he asked:
"You using this machine?"
Reader,
I nearly proposed.
Not because he was handsome
though unfortunately he was
but because his voice sounded stable.
Do you understand how ****** stability becomes
after enough heartbreak?
Probably not.
Humans continue making terrible decisions professionally.
Last Thursday, he smiled at me.
Not the gym smile.
Not the polite nod.
Something slower.
I forgot how to use the leg press.
For ten seconds
I was twenty again —
terrified, hopeful,
completely unprepared.
Then he looked away.
The moment passed.
But now when I rerack my weights
I do it carefully.
Wondering
if he notices.
Wondering
if he also goes home
and thinks about drive safe
and means it.
We still don't talk.
That's the problem with stability.
It never makes the first move.
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 8:27 AM UTC
I make soup exactly like my mother did.
Too much parsley.
Too much care.
Enough food for an accidental village.
Nobody teaches men this part about grief:
how domestic it becomes.
You inherit gestures.
Tastes.
Ways of cutting onions.
Sometimes I stir soup
and suddenly remember her wrists.
Not even her face.
Just wrists moving through kitchen light.
Memory is strange and disrespectful.
Outside, Belgrade is gray and expensive.
Inside, steam on windows.
Jazz low in the background.
My friend sleeping on the couch after heartbreak.
Of course he came to me.
Apparently I look like someone
who keeps extra blankets for emotional emergencies.
The soup helps.
Not completely.
Nothing completely helps.
But people become softer after eating.
More honest.
Which is maybe all cooking ever was:
a small interruption of loneliness.
One day I will make this soup for someone I love.
He will ask me why there is so much parsley.
And I will say:
“My mother.”
And he will not ask anything else.
That is the entire point of having a kitchen.
That is the entire point of surviving.
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 8:20 AM UTC
A man named “WolfTopBerlin”
asks if I am submissive.
Sir.
I am emotionally exhausted.
Different category entirely.
His profile says:
“No drama.”
Which in gay language means:
contains historical amounts of drama.
Another man sends me a photo
so aggressively cropped
it looked classified.
Meanwhile I am just trying to experience intimacy
without developing a secondary personality.
Dating apps are extraordinary.
Thousands of men
looking for love, *** validation, distraction, healing, revenge,
or someone to split rent with.
Sometimes all at once.
One guy asks:
“What are you into?”
I almost answer:
consistent communication,
emotionally available masculinity,
slow mornings,
mutual care,
someone who notices when I’m pretending to be okay.
Instead I write:
“haha depends ;)”
Humanity continues to disappoint me creatively.
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 8:15 AM UTC
All the adults were smoking.
This is how I remember the Balkans.
Plastic chairs.
Apricots.
Somebody's uncle repairing something unnecessary.
Children running between parked cars
like tiny emotionally unstable diplomats.
The television inside talked constantly about danger.
Meanwhile outside:
watermelon,
heat,
neighbors yelling affectionately from balconies.
Nobody explained anything directly.
You learned history through atmosphere.
You learned fear
through lowered voices in kitchens.
You learned love
because everybody fed you constantly.
A woman from the third floor
once slapped my face lightly
for swearing
then gave me cake immediately after.
Regional parenting.
At night
my mother watered plants in silence.
Music drifted from somewhere distant.
Laughter too.
I think adults believed
if they kept talking loudly enough
the world would not collapse.
Honestly?
Reasonable strategy.
One evening, I asked my father:
"Are we going to die?"
He looked at me for a long time.
Then he lit another cigarette
and said:
"Finish your apricots."
I never asked again.
The apricots were good.
The war ended.
Somehow, both things are connected.
I think about that courtyard now
when I can't sleep.
Not the war.
Not the fear.
Just the apricots.
The plastic chairs.
The way my mother watered plants
like she was putting small bandages
on the whole country.
I am still that child, sometimes.
Running between parked cars.
Waiting for someone
to explain everything
with a piece of cake.
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 8:05 AM UTC
The woman at immigration control
looks at me
like she personally invented borders.
I hand her seventeen documents
proving I exist.
Utility bills.
Bank statements.
A lease agreement emotionally stronger
than most modern relationships.
She says:
“You forgot page four.”
Of course I did.
Europe is a continent built entirely
around tiny missing papers.
Behind me, a French couple is arguing quietly
with the intimacy of people
who have suffered IKEA together.
I suddenly miss my mother.
Not dramatically.
Not cinema-style.
Just a small sharp feeling:
she would have known which folder to use.
That’s grief after thirty-five.
Not crying in churches.
Just standing under fluorescent lighting
wanting someone to organize your documents gently.
Outside, it starts raining sideways.
A man in a navy coat holds the door for me.
Beautiful hands.
Calm face.
Wedding ring.
Tragic.
Naturally.
Then he turns around.
“Page four,” he says quietly.
And hands me a folded paper
from his own folder.
I don’t ask why.
Neither does the woman.
She stamps my passport.
Outside, rain continues sideways.
He lights a cigarette
and walks away
without saying goodbye.
I never learn his name.
But for one minute
a stranger with a wedding ring
carried my missing page.
This is not love.
This is bureaucracy
with accidental tenderness.
And unfortunately,
that’s enough to make me believe
in something.
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 8:00 AM UTC
There was the scientist
who spoke about black holes
like they were childhood memories.
The bartender in Amsterdam
with tired green eyes
and forearms capable of repairing my entire personality.
The Serbian architect
who kissed me once outside a kebab shop
while snow fell softly
onto both our bad coping mechanisms.
The married man in Madrid
who looked at me too long over wine.
We do not discuss him.
There are always men.
Beautiful temporary men.
Men who teach you things accidentally:
how to leave,
how to stay,
how to ask better questions,
how to stop confusing emotional labor with intimacy.
I wanted to save half of them.
The other half
wanted to save me.
This is what adults call chemistry.
Sometimes I think love is just:
two exhausted people
misunderstanding each other
with tremendous sincerity.
Still,
I continue.
Buying candles.
Learning recipes.
Washing good glasses by hand.
Preparing emotionally
for a tenderness
that may already be walking toward me slowly
through some supermarket
thinking about olives,
or grief,
or whether to text me first.
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 7:56 AM UTC
The cashier calls me "love."
That's it.
That's the whole emotional event.
Now I'm buying unnecessary flowers
like a widow in a European film.
The old man behind me
has been flirting with the same bakery employee
for at least eight years.
Real commitment still exists.
He says:
"You disappear, the city changes."
She rolls her eyes so tenderly
I almost start crying into avocados.
There are couples everywhere buying boring things together:
dish soap,
potatoes,
shared futures.
Meanwhile I'm standing in aisle six
holding olives
like a recently divorced gay pirate.
A child is screaming near frozen peas.
Someone drops oranges.
Outside, rain.
Inside, fluorescent loneliness.
And still
something in me loves humanity terribly.
Its small exhausted rituals.
Its terrible jackets.
Its hopeful little dinners.
Even now I catch myself thinking:
maybe somebody is looking at me too
wondering what my apartment smells like
after midnight.
The cashier had a small scar next to her mouth.
I didn't notice it until she smiled.
Now I will remember her forever.
Not because I loved her.
Because someone with a scar
still called me "love."
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 7:52 AM UTC
At 5am
the club becomes emotionally democratic.
Suddenly everyone is fragile:
lawyers,
drug dealers,
vegetarians,
men named Luca with chest tattoos and unresolved fathers.
A beautiful Black man kisses my forehead
near the bathrooms
like he has known me through several wars.
Techno is strange.
It sounds like anxiety industrialized,
yet somehow
people become softer inside it.
My friends are outside smoking.
One is crying beautifully in Croatian.
One is in love again.
One has disappeared with a German photographer
who looks like he owns expensive emotional problems.
I stand near the speakers
thinking about how exhausting it is
to always be “the strong one.”
People think charisma is energy.
It is not.
It is maintenance.
It is making eye contact
while your soul quietly lies down on cold tiles
for a minute.
Then a man touches the small of my back
gently,
confidently,
like someone parking a very expensive car.
And suddenly
I understand religion.
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 7:47 AM UTC