ON THE EVE OF BIG AND SMALL THINGS

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She had two dots tattooed
on each side of her mouth.
She sat facing backwards
in the bus and could see only
the past of our journey which
anyway went in a circle.

'But my boy wouldn't grow,' she said
to the woman across from her
'his head, his legs remained
just the same and the doctors
saw this, but you don't have to be
a doctor at all to...'

The dots by her mouth
gathered and pulled apart, and
dropped down in her mid-sentences.
The world was preparing for war
while she was coming back from her own one,
a veteran, tattooed

with her ugly amulets.
The sky was curdled
like a frightened mind
or a red soup which many people stir
but still it clots.

© Kristin Dimitrova
© Kristin Dimitrova, translated from bulgarian
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© E-magazine LiterNet, 12.07.2008, № 7 (104)

Other publications:
Kristin Dimitrova. My Life in Squares. Middlesbrough: Smokestack Books, 2010.