small fantasies,
melted candles,
the taste of starch,
the smell of rotting potatoes,
a blow
to the sore spot
Achilles’ heel.
children of sin
tread a steep cliff.

Something Special
Grandpa used to bring simple candies.
His knock on the door would spark our excitement.
And why was he so kind, after all?
He taught me chess,
loved to read,
was a Labourist.
I don’t remember much else.
It's sad he left this world too soon.
I think I would’ve learned more about him
if I were older.

I will drink a ****** Mary
with the aroma of tomatoes,
turn on my plasma TV
with useless news
nausea takes hold of me,
and the sand unfolds...

Trees nourish hearts,
and I dyed my hair with the paint of their bark.
Like in Chinese fairy tales,
I don’t eat bird nests
that’s how I learned about such dishes,
probably from Pippi Longstocking.
I heard about bird nests as food from her.
It’s cold now,
so I decided
to make a sauce with vegetables
just to warm up the chill.

A top circle  and altogether a different dimension,
high heels and not quite obscene...
You are the misalignment of status,
worthy of the path of light,
yet the bearer of a hopeless platform
a train discarded into a dark world,
with a faint desire for love.
Hell is on Earth.

A fleeting fantasy,
an outburst of love
radiant as Greek myth.
To wake from the haze of sleep
is no simple thing.
My butterfly has flown away.

and when night fell,
I drew heavy curtains over the translucent ones.
With my mind, I gazed somewhere into the black sky
I thought I too might glimpse
a bright star
that would announce the birth of a great one.
The seas shimmer blue
somewhere in the darkness.
At its shore,
a man strokes a woman’s long black hair.
Oh, darkness has descended.

the color of cinnabar
bluish-red fluid spills,
reminding me of a pearl.
I loathe that one day,
somewhere on Perovskaya,
in some bar.
I hate every foul memory
that tastes like blood,
like rust.
A city
where hot wind blows,
dust clings to sweaty skin.
You sit on the stairwell, endlessly tired,
and tears won’t fall
the antidepressants have made you
forget how to cry.
You haven’t wept in so long
not even for the things
most worth crying for,
when once
you could cry for an hour.
Vile summer!

I remember those nights when my mother read me fairy tales,
I would fall asleep in clean white sheets,
dreaming dreams
outside, the wind swayed the branches.
Back then, nothing felt as fairy-tale-like
as the morning
that began with pearl-colored
milk.

Stones splattered with mud,
the night cold upon the earth,
barefoot, I walk on muddy, cold stones
I miss the scent of your perfume,
whose fragrance drives me
to bleed myself out.

Boiled plum jam,
and the wind took away my hat.
In the morning,
when I spread black plum jam on toast,
I remember the taste
of the sweetest love.
Just boil the plum
and sweeten it...

the dreams that leave me behind your back,
love in autumn,
and lying on brittle leaves.
There’s a long road to reach you,
and with every dawn,
I wither away, thinking of you.

The car windows lie back into the rain,
yet the rain keeps soaking them again.
This process
and the squeaking of the windshield wipers
is my favorite.
In these moments,
I dream of heavier rain,
of a longer traffic jam
so I wouldn’t be able to go back home.

It rains, and children, in rubber boots,
walk into the deepest puddles.
It rains the grass grows wet,
and my feet burn, for they are bare.
Rain is most beautiful in the mist,
and the pains our bodies feel
as the rain approaches
vanish with the rain.

I came down with the initial paranoia of love,
because I was unwell. I couldn’t read anything anymore.
“You’re a useless carcass. A rotten carcass,”
repeated two women with provincial accents.

They were saying, “She was born, a matryoshka was born
and here’s another one.
Exactly the same.”

“No. I don’t want to be here,” I kept saying.
I thought, this isn’t right.
I need to repent and drive out the demons.
But those women weren’t going anywhere.

On the third night without sleep, I finally dozed off.
Be

No more voices.
Yet still quiet silence.

We met in the psychiatric hospital.
Yes, there are so many demons here.
I can’t hide from anyone.
For now, they’ve put me in isolation. Alone.
I became a subject of observation.
What could be worse than that? Nothing.

God.
I stared at the white ceiling.
A single black spider above my head.
I wondered if I’d transform into some kind of insect, like Gregor.
****, I love Kafka.
Yeah, I think I broke my camera.
I think I broke it. It upset me.
And then they called me to eat
fish in French mayonnaise.

One winter, I noticed a migrant black crow,
arrived from a distant foreign land,
from my balcony
it was sitting and watching the gray crows,
who were hungry, since it was morning.
The black crow looked strong and calm.
I wondered
was it hungry too?
But it sat apart,
its feathers shimmering
like black satin.

In the rivers where there are many fish,
the paths are winding.
The fisherman longs to get there.
Fast rivers are more dangerous
like unfulfilled dreams that we have forgotten.
Every morning, the fisherman goes out to fish,
dreaming of reaching those depths.