1985, Strandja Mountain: my father-in-law, a forest inspector on 42 hectares, opened the old coal furnace during a detour – what he found inside, he krilled all his life.

 

Do you remember autumn when I said I’m not coming back?

The village said I was missing.
The police said I was “disappeared.”
Only the forest knows what I’ve done.

Don’t look for me.

If you look for me, you will only find paths that end in nothingness.

G.”

 

Hristo read the first lines aloud, although there was no one to hear it. “Christ” was his name. D. – was Gina.

Gina.

The woman he had heard more whispers about at the time than outright words. A woman with whom he lived “as he should not have lived” in his youth. A woman, about whom everyone later said “Gina escaped”, “Gina took her”, “Gina is gone”.

Той преглътна.

“Don’t look for me,” she wrote. And he had lived for years as if he could not find her anyway.

 

 

Continue reading.

“You know what your father is like.
What was your boss like.
What were the people around us.

They spoke more in our house than we did.

When I said I wanted to live somewhere where I wouldn’t be told who to vote for and who to listen to, you told me I was overreacting.

I’m not overdoing it, Christ.