Poetry

Still & Μωβ

by Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki

Still & Μωβ^[1]

still^[2]
There is nothing that doesn’t fit in writing or couldn’t grow in it.
I had no land nor space, she was with me, from toes to hair, loose matter.
I lived in six out of the eight days of the week, forty five years of return.
For eight days I lived by the sea, on the soft sand, in an orange tent.
The horizon line entered my head, cutting my body into a top and a bottom, dividing rocks, and fixing them to islands.

Cut in half or even more.
Like a sharp comment in the middle of a sentence.
The pain made me watery, clashed over my foaming thoughts on stressful nights.
The orange tent could barely contain me.
Merging, singing waves. Steps on the shore. Half cut, half fool.
My only wish is a chair and a cold coffee. Moby Dick becomes my winter book, classified as a guard.
Lie vertically on the lemony sand. I breathe six out of the eight days of the week, the sea is unwelcomely honest. The boats, untouched by the salt in the water, float in the mist, in the South of Crete where the sun is green.
Paximadi^[3] are two islands but I see them as one.

I feel no more the hours nor the sea; I curve in my folding cave.
I hear my dreams, metallic crabs dance in the night sun.
By now, something should have come.
By now, at least an end should have been.
By then is where the end comes.
By now, I wish I never learned how to sleep. It is terrifying under Almirikia^.[4]

The wind moved on the sea-beds.
She carried her hands,
all shadowed with simplicity.
I slept six out of eight days in a week.
We merged with the anchored sea.
I felt no more, χτισμένη^[5] inside the dress.
Absent of sound, absent in memories - no voices, no dreams.
Under the rain, whose water we feel,
beings in August’s purple nights,
stars shadowing the beach.


Mauve
She cooked. She danced. She prayed.
   Selves all merged
   she nurtured, she lived.
Shared, no one lives.
The hands told me the truth.

[1] Μωβ means mauve in Greek.

[2] Steal, steel; can you hear the words?

[3] Paximadi is a kind of dry bread, a food made for long distance travelers in the past and for the winter. As well as a formation of three small uninhabited islands in the south of Crete.

[4] Tamarind trees are usually planted by the Greek coast to provide shade and they are known for their resilience to harsh weather.

[5] Built [chtismeni].

Appeared in Issue Fall '25