translated by Lena Kallergi

(To those lost in 1990)

Friends departed without saying goodbye. Lost between white breasts, sucking sleep.
This is why I come back at nights in my dream, a pendulum in the jaws of time. I fall
outstretching my hands to reach them but their traces are bloody on the frozen grass.
In their flowering heads I gather scarlet flowers, enclosing their bewildered lips in my
palms. This was not land, it was water, its soul crammed like the cracked mirror of a
faraway country. The gardens of my sleep, brimming with night flowers and red eyes
burned in the light. Their ropes, fearful snakes hanging from the ceiling. With their
shoes holding tightly a possibility, fed on virgin soil.

     Minus Sixteen, Melani Publications, 2016