One day you’ll forget this, my father said

when I wanted to know: will it show forever? I covered my eyes and my
tears tasted of metal. The plate and the scar to cover it, the thin line
between skin and skin stitched. I reminded the self I didn’t recognise
Don’t you dare cry because you’re alive, not a total loss like your car.
The hospital walls, such blank faces. And the moment it happened were
the bees buzzing under my skin. They buzzed all night, the wound
itched. Every mangled night I counted my total losses. Every morning
one small step, a giant leap. One small step on the vinyl floor, one giant
leap to the fucking moon. It smells of gunpowder, and one day I’ll forget
this.

Nora Nadjarian is a Cypriot poet and writer who has been published internationally. She won the Anthropocene Valentine’s Day Poetry Competition 2022 and was a finalist in the Mslexia poetry competition 2021. Her work was recently published in Perverse and Magma. Her poetry collection Iktsuarpok is now available for pre-order from Broken Sleep Books.