Borders

The body that demaractates me  Is the first barrier  That I pondered passing I was four years old when I first misplaced my tongue When I  Slurped it down  Spurring my eyes shut                         Puncturing an entrance  To a rear rescue room  I ran to grasp my body  I gasped to own it  Like one owns

Six Meetings with White Flowers

When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good

I am from here

Somewhere on the border,  where the cold and the dry kills everything that needs to be killed,  somewhere around here is where I’m from.  Where the weeds are lush and the grass is gone.  Where the cow’s milk tastes dirty and the breast milk tastes sad.  Where bodies are cremated, not buried, and you can

Random At Moments

1 The day I lost my iPhone, credit cards, a photo, a student ID, a residence permit and the purse that contained them all, I was with a friend who was visiting Berlin for fall break from Vienna. We used to sit on the bench every night, drinking enough “përlinër bilsnër” to fill up Spok’s

I Checked and It Was Still There

“But as they burned, disappearing irrevocably one after the other, you stopped believing that there was any purpose in a book’s existence. Or perhaps the only one to have worked out their purpose was the Sarajevan author and bibliophile who, instead of using expensive firewood, warmed his fingers last winter on the flames of Dostoevsky,

Bittersweet Candy

Some of my first memories of giving, or rather receiving, are of my grandfather giving me candy. My grandfather always pulls treasures out of his droopy pants, wide and concealing like a magician’s cloth. Under this cloth hides his shockingly thin body, as well as the timeline of the rather ritualistic candy distribution, always managing to

Hide and Seek

I crept into the dark, vacant stairwell, the source of many family ghost stories and nightmares. The wind vibrated through the walls. The ocean was so close I could hear its hum even here. Time felt slower in the dark, I couldn’t see the change of things, flies in the dust or the dandelion behind