TEA AND ROSES

Rositza Borkovski

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In the kitchen I was. Tea I was making for myself, when I saw her to come out of the bathroom carrying the garden roses I gave her as a present the other day. I remember I had bought these roses on the way back from the shop. Looking at them, they seemed to have the eyes of children from an orphanage.

And now, with the roses and the empty vase in her hands, she was fussing around. Naked. Back and forth. Silver drops were trickling down - down to the time of her body, down to my forgotten caresses.

‘What are you looking for?’ I am asking.

‘A nail’ she is answering.

She is always this way - she starts doing one thing, then another crosses her mind, then she sits to relax, but then jumps to finish what she started.

‘What do you need this nail for?’

‘For the flowers. To hang them down so they’ll dry.’

‘They will fade anyway’ I am saying.

‘I know, she is answering, their blossoms will fall off, and then their stems, rotten by the water, will stink.’

‘It’s inevitable.’

‘No, it is not. Making them dry, I’ll preserve them and their colors.’

She is this way - she wants to preserve things. She collects, puts aside, and piles and piles up.

‘Do you need help?’

‘I’ll take care of it. Just bring the hammer over here; it’s in the top drawer in the kitchen.’

And then, while driving the nail into the wall, she thought, ‘They are not fading. Dry flowers do not fade,’ I heard her.

But the tea is getting cold, outside and inside is getting dark, and all these symbols are fading.

© Rositza Borkovski
© Dimitar Dimitrov, translated from bulgarian
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© E-magazine LiterNet, 14.11.2007, № 11 (96)