Self-translated from the Greek by Katerina Agyioti

 

Twenty Micro Poems

I am adopted. My parents don’t know it yet. I am waiting for the right moment to tell them. (I chose them when I was an angel above Berlin—they were too small to remember).

***

For years I endure the fact that we love each other.

***

We run in a direction opposite from our traumas, and, before reaching a point distant enough for us to safely start thinking about where we really want to go, life is over.

***

There is no paradise, my brothers and sisters. The only thing we can take pride in as we suffer
is that we suffer more beautifully than others.

***

But the solutions you are offering me are inspired by the same life manual that made me ill.

***

I am emotionally self-made.

***

He was lovely, but whenever the rain stopped, I could forget him at a shop, like an umbrella.

***

From the most moving memories, you will not have any pictures.

***

I betrayed everyone so that I am not unjust to anyone.

***

They are so deeply in love with each other, that they do not bother each other with their love. 

***

I wonder what kind of relationship the people with whom I have a relationship have with me. 

***

I matured. Now a mathematical sadness, devoid of its emotion, sits inside me.

***

Two unbearably average people had the most unique love together.

***

You cannot smell an eternal flower while completely alive.

***

The only light I have illuminates ruins.

***

I am looking to write a poem that will be accepted by gov.uk as valid proof of identity. 

***

The doctors will not be ceasing life support if the patient has left my book unfinished.

***

Someday, somebody will stop you in the street and threaten to kill you if you cannot recite verses of my poems.

***

The one who knows how to love me is not the first person to come to my mind when I am asked who loves me. 

***

I was brought up by a tree, but it was hurt: its broken branch was resting, with all its weight, upon my chest.

***

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Immigration Slug 

In this foreign country where I came to live, I can only be exactly who I am. A slug, exposed to the weather.

Homesickness is one’s desire to return to the metaphors, into the fairy tales, into the owned building of the self.

One day they might say, “She does not wish to come back, anymore: She was introduced to new stories, and she found people keen on lies.”

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Love Queen 

Sometimes, as I walk through the shopping center with their love in my heart,

and I catch a glimpse of my reflection in some random shop’s window,

it really surprises me how come I do not wear an ancient tiara—

or, why an entourage of Bogomils does not walk behind me at a respectable distance,

with black birds standing proudly on their shoulders.

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Mobile Fear 

I woke up just before dawn, and, as I was making myself a coffee, I heard my phone ringing in the other room. “This
is clearly bad news”, I thought 

and went to pick it up—but no: it was the morning birds, singing.

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Also, read a fiction written by Bengali writer Mojaffor Hossain, translated into English by Fayeza Hasanat, and published in The Antonym:

My Mother Was A Prostitute— Mojaffor Hossain

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