cardamom and soft bites
It is late, and the woman sits in her kitchen. The woman drinks her coffee: hand of claw, hand of am
I asking for too much? Spark of cigarettes. Oudh, the taste of time: silken like shivers. Sublime.
Burnt. The smoke, turning the room blue-gold. The curtains flutter with the night’s wind. It is a
circle without an end. The clock ticks, the house breathing cardamom. Her boy sits, hidden, at the
top of the stairs. She does not see this. A point in dissolution. Mind feeds into that which is circling,
waiting. Resin of burnt words. The screeching thing we all steer clear of: say, it’ll pull like a star,
collapsed, and so
ooooooyou see the curtains flutter with the night’s wind. It is a circle without an end. The clock
ooooooticks, the house breathing cardamom. Your boy sits, hidden, at the top of the stairs. It
oooooocold. The dogs bark outside. The key turns.
Julia Retkova has two degrees in Literature and Digital Studies from King's College London. When she's not working on an app that connects foreigners with their family overseas, she's running a small literary journal called Nymphs. She was born in Ukraine, but grew up in the south of Spain. She loves reading books in the sun and writing when everyone’s asleep.