Yasen Vasilev

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She always felt somehow complete, oblong, round when she looked at herself in the mirror. But in real life everything is squares. All around - her parents, her angular sister, the balcony where she is standing now, the box-shaped apartment building, the city. Squares. Everything grey is beautiful. Is it? She keeps looking on, but she can’t see a thing. She thought of tumbling over the guardrail, like a random water drop rolling off, and putting an end to all the geometry. Should she? She keeps looking around. But to no avail. Her eyes can’t see. As if she’s been pinned with a compass to the terrace, the throbbing balcony that is shrinking down with every beat, where nobody has ever gone out, from which no staircase spirals down, or a door opens to. Hence the power of the square - it is integral - it stands between outside and inside, between up and down, neither here nor elsewhere. Squares. So what’s left for a round, live water to do, except to shrivel like a snake skin under the sucking light of the grey sun who’s rays are holding down like needles the four corners of the world? Tell me, what?

© Yasen Vasilev
© Emil Lazarov, translated
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© Електронно списание LiterNet, 01.09.2009, № 9 (118)