Volume 1
Like a bed that keeps making itself
This I wrote in the summer of 2024.
Not About the Bag
I collapsed on the grass with what seemed like my entire life’s possessions. Soft pajama pants, a sports bra, shoes for dressing up, a skirt that never fails me, two types of tops to combine based on the weather (ughhh, the weather!!), an umbrella (ughhhh, the umbrella!!), scrunchies of different colors, jewelry, a small make-up bag, pills, ear plugs, chargers (ughhhhh, the chargers!!), a laptop, an iPad, a pencil, a drawing glove, perfume, M’s birthday present,...
On top of that, I was thirsty.
S. said I might not have the right bag for it. I said It’s not about the bag. A bag will allow me to do better at what I don’t want to be doing at all.
If anything, it’s about the yogurt. I need to know how much is left and how many days have passed since I opened it. Is it the one that’s good for the gut or the one with more protein? Whose fridge was it that the yogurt was last seen in? He has a roommate, which means that the path between me and the yogurt has been blocked by a whole different set of questions.
Do I have living room clothes? Is my hair nice? I generally don’t want to be seen before I’m ready to be seen.
If I’m being totally honest, it’s not about the yogurt, either.
Unbeknownst to me, a thought process had silently crystallized and is now hitting me on the head like a fully formed decision. There is no use in thinking about it, no use in denying it.
It’s time we moved in.
We Moved In
The other day, he said we are people who do a lot of things. As in, we are two relentless individuals.
Now all of that takes place at the same address.
Also, all of my stuff is there.
September
In September, I spent time with Grandma.
Mathematician
This is what messaging1 may look like when your brother is a mathematician.
Invalid
Then there was the laundry. He carried an IKEA2 bag full of it down to the basement. I went with him under the pretense that I’d install the laundry app once I was downstairs. I say ‘pretenses’ not because I wasn’t going to install the app, but because the very idea of washing laundry throws me into a deep, total dissociation.
I was enacting a decision to do laundry without ever making it, which, some may say, makes it invalid.
Laundry is one of those categories of life at which I am perpetually bested.
I don’t have to tell you that we forgot the washing detergent, had to go up three flights of stairs to fetch it, only to realize I didn’t take the extra IKEA bag he handed me; so I had to run back up to grab it, and in one of the runs the machine didn’t even cycle through the wash, the laundry was dry when we came back to pick it up.
Spreading the laundry out on a rack — that I can do.
There is a tactility to it. The fabric gives back.
Close connection
I was never the type of person whose head constantly hurt.
My head just doesn’t hurt much of the time.
Sometimes my head hurts, but I’m not exactly aware of it.
It’s simply that some body parts we are in closer connection to than others.
The romance of it all
He bought me flowers. It was a lovely gesture, albeit revealing of one simple truth – we didn’t own a vase. The flowers stood next to me in a pitcher, flowers being one of those things for which the vessel matters just as much as the thing itself.
I wasn’t gonna let his romantic gesture sit in an unromantic vessel.
So I took a six-minute walk to that one shop that just so happens to be incredibly romantic. I found the vase in less than a minute, and spent the rest of my time cross-referencing the chosen one with other, lesser vases.
I also bought a small, woven, royal-blue key-chain in the shape of a heart, licorice tea, and a fruit basket.
I came back home with my romantic loot positively bursting at the seams.
-
“You sure it’s a fruit basket?” he asked.
“It’s a thing, a thing for fruits. You put fruit in it, and it becomes a fruit basket.”
A moment passed.
“Yeah, but see how soft it is; it comes out of shape.”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“It’s not firm, so when you pick it up…”
“Why would you be picking it up?” I said and wiggled out of the room in an attempt to hide my very own emotional unraveling.
-
“Please love and respect the new fruit basket.”, I heard myself say a minute later.
He dropped the matter gently, yet immediately.
Copenhagen
“Jebo život i ko ga dade”, is what I said upon reading the theme for the Poetry Unleashed3 anthology Arina is concocting.
I was gonna move away without saying a word.
I was.
I had the full intention to do so. Besides, I moved away. Why say something now?
There are poems I write that function as a kaleidoscope of feeling.
This one is far from it. It’s the kind of poem that holds one note until something inside quietly gives way.
There is a bitterness to it. I rarely allow myself bitter poems. Not because I’m not plenty bitter, but because for a bitter poem to succeed, it needs to reveal a good deal of love for the thing that is being resented.
And that’s not exactly easy.
Actual messages my brother sent me. If you are both a Croatian and an English speaker, you may discern that the original manuscript later became the entirety of the poem. You may also be wondering if this means I stole the poem. The answer is-yes, indeed, I stole this poem from my brother. Please relax about it.
This zine is not sponsored by IKEA. Not yet, at least.