BY NORA NADJARIAN
He has returned, the world traveller, with a silver cigarette case in his pocket. He shares his dreams, now almost forty years old, and says he misses the sea. Sometimes he mixes water with salt and drinks it, and sometimes he pretends he is swallowing it, and drowning. At other times, he takes out a cigarette, lights it, disappears behind the slow smoke. In a dream, I touch his beard and he kisses my hand which turns into ash. In another dream, I steal his cigarette case, empty it of its contents and press it to my heart. It feels cold against my skin, like a stethoscope. There are five cigarettes on the floor.
Nora Nadjarian is a poet and writer from the island of Cyprus. She is the author of three collections of poetry and a book of short stories, Ledra Street. Her work has been published in Cyprus, Israel, the UK, the USA and elsewhere, most recently in “Litro” magazine, Metazen, 7 x 20 and PicFic. A chapbook of her short stories is forthcoming from Folded Word in 2011.
A-Minor 