We are always meeting in the strangest places. Once our fingers brushed while I was still pink from the shower. Once I was a baby and you swallowed me. Once I was a town attraction, crouching in the saltwater, strangers taking turns and scrubbing seaweed right into my scalp. For weeks, I smelled like salt. Then for weeks I smelled like sujuk: potent, garlicky from yet another tincture. And all this time I envied you—the way you took up space. How you always made an entrance, like a frame shattering, no warning in the night. Suddenly you wake up and the floor is glass. When you arrive, I am certain you will kill me. But the next day is a Tuesday, and a bit of sun comes through the shutters, and I sink my teeth into a fresh, cold wedge of watermelon, dive into a dusky pond, and by the end I’m still alive, standing at a cliff edge, just me and this body capable of flight.
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Yanita Georgieva is a Bulgarian journalist raised in Beirut, Lebanon. She has been living in London for the past few years, where she works for the World Service. You can find her work in Poetry Wales, Hobart, Chestnut Review, and elsewhere.