i entered your living room & it was cramped. it reminded me of my former coworker’s apartment in Brooklyn. just like my grandparents’. knickknacks, a framed wedding photo, sepia-toned. the couch released dust particles every time a butt sank into it.
i planted my butt down, waiting for you; i’m always waiting for some boy to show up with beer, but you actually wanted to show me your sketchbook like in a museum. look here i was in the park i drew a ladybug. here i was in the orchard and a dog… you quickly realized i wasn’t interested. i’m that kind of girl who doesn’t care about souls. i stuck with Kantian thinking. what, was i supposed to parade my diplomas too? “hey, come over, i’ve got my MBA on the terrace, and the one from my first master’s.” bullshit.
i must have seemed like a mother to the boy from Brooklyn. he called me into his bedroom and i felt like picking up the plastic bottles from the carpet. who knows what got into me. i saw he had books and i said “wow you have books.” supposedly boys like girls who read; or that’s what their mommies teach them. get yourself a good girl minding her business, an intellectual. stupid mommies. they don’t know what girls like me are like, the kind who would sell you for a hardcover copy of Anna Karenina.
the kind who drives you away if I N S P I R A T I O N happens to strike her at that exact moment. then packs you off to therapy to work on your whiny inner child, so you’ll stop wanting so much attention from her and start wanting to buy her clothes & books & Lana del Rey vinyls. that’s what girls like me are like.
then they scold you for not giving them what they want when they want it because they don’t know how else to fuel Creation; it needs a bit of drama too.
you put an arm around my shoulders and it feels good (your hand feels good, or is it sick? should we get it some Aspacardin?). i think i exaggerated though, maybe there aren’t that many dust particles in your living room after all. i burst out laughing thinking that a modern figurine would embody Ballerina Cappuccina instead of the communist one. like my former coworker’s apartment in NYC, even though they were never communists. americans just over-identified with everything that exists, then said “add a little bit of spice,” meaning histrionic impulses. like all the boys who go and bring beer or sketchbooks while you sit on the couch.
what’s the deal? you ask when you see that i’m not looking at you at all.
i’m nearsighted, i tell you, that’s why my eyes look glassy (they’re not glassy because of you, they’re glassy because of someone i can’t have; girls from literature departments always run this scenario, they always over-identify with Veronica Micle1).
i see you sink into silence & i like that. you thought you could instrumentalize me as a cute bookworm gf – who actually soon turns into an unmarried old girl because of unacceptable airs amid the post-pandemic economic crisis. you have to go 50-50 you have to keep living with your ex so you don’t end up homeless you have to buy ethically produced objects you have to
i think i’m going home, i tell you. thanks for the invitation.
the soles of my feet sink into the linoleum as i walk toward the door.
This excerpt was originally published in Romanian by CUTRA as “demoni roz cu cornițe” and was translated into English by the author.
- Veronica Micle (1850-1889) was a Romanian poet whose life and work are closely associated with Mihai Eminescu, one of Romania’s canonical poets. ↩︎
Cristina Boncea 
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