U were the only Turk i knew, and also the only Turk my parents liked. they never let me walk around the fountains at night even though it’s the only place in Sofia with streetlights after two a.m. b/c boys that looked like you kept trying to sell me fake gold jewelry. And finger me.

We were playing w/ the idea that love is something that happens outside your head. the implication was that i would stay in Sofia, where we could go to NDK and Nutone every night with all of ur high-T dental assistant friends. I was the only American u liked. We got so nervous about Georgi ever finding out, not b/c he would be mad at you but b/c he would be mad at Me for trying to spritz all of his roided homies with Le Labo so they’d smell like the German faggots i fucked back home. 

I find that normie men don’t just want to have sex with you normally, or regularly, but in a way that makes sex a pivotal event. This was kind of the main attractor--it has been ever since the night in the park where [REDACTED] got stabbed, where U ran me back to my parents crying and saved me. U tried to save me from the mom thing, too, by telling me that you hated yours. At the time it was enough, being twelve years old with u when i was eight.

 I thought for a while that the opposite of virginity was sex, but actually the opposite of virginity is a relationship. U knew u were falling for the liberal trap American women set of purposefully making themselves unappealing and crude—which in turn makes us more dynamic, meaning, soy, née, attainable—and thus we would both remain untouched.

U were trying to teach me how to roll cigarettes at my uncle’s archaeological dig and u said, American girls are easy b/c they like being scared. And ur sooo scary U made me hang out with ur parents on YOUR name-day, while you and Georgi did weird pills with the waitress from Happy Grill. It’s a noble savage thing, i said at that dig, trying to explain. That makes no sense, you said. Im not a savage.

Im sorry about the night at Sinyo i told you we had to stop. I was getting a weird guilt complex being near the park that got named after [REDACTED], i kept thinking about how i was in love with him when i was eight and his death felt like God telling me to stick to ppl my own size. And also it was b/c i had to run your dad’s hot-dog truck at the music festival and i didn’t want you to feel weird around me. And b/c i was simply too New York and i’d always use it as a crutch for thinking i was better than dirt paths and donkeys.

What sucks is that everyone in newyork loves that shit now. They think it’s raw, they think it’s understated enough to be marketable, they think it’s bijou and Deutsche. But they dont know that bribing cops is really hard if you revert to using the formal “please” (моля ви vs. моля те). They find that shit disrespectful and they’ll use it to get 20 more lev out of you, and the problem is that i’ll give it to them—it’s 10USD, i get that shit in tips. Isnt that a problem? isn’t that THE problem?

You didnt cry but you kept nodding, chin up soldier. when they shipped Milena off to culinary school in California everyone wondered if you would go with. U were the rough one, the scrappy one, u were the one telling [REDACTED] to be careful. U knew what to do in the face of fear; U were scarier. But you were focusing on bigger things than culinary school, like getting into real estate.

We didnt even have sex after we left Sinyo, b/c you Turks are too proud to fuck after you get whittled down, your cock becomes a penis. We parted ways then had to see eachother at every family function, where you would grill the burgers and i would venture into my new foyer of posting. Posting so i would seem like a sweet girl. sweet girls learn to post from a young age, and i was putting pure shit in the post like John Waters.

i was writing the book of my life, my life as a curl of lactic acid in the stomach, my life as a neoliberal twink at Bossa Nova, New York, my life as a slab of meat on top of the thin fold on panties where discharge collects. U were getting into real estate and paying off your new apartment, where u lived with ur cool new gf who was a vet. Babe pls wake up before Leya tries to fuck me again. The ending is worse than a punchline, it’s too epistemological. 

I was planting the flowers of my mind. there’s no grass in Brooklyn. In sofia you can smell the mountains when you’re drinking coffee by construction sites. When we were little at the swingsets in your family’s gated apartment complex you asked me if I’d seen the Twin Towers fall. i do have a confession. I said that I had because I had.