Alien
Now and then
I hear the foreignness
in my voice echoing
down the stairwell,
mingling with the smell
of metropolitan piss.
I occasionally write home
(if that is what it is)
in a rusting mother's tongue -
assuring indifferent relatives that
all is well and I will write again.
The last time I visited I
felt alien, turning stotinki in my hand
and, in a moment of panic, dumbly
pointing at fruit in the grocer's.
Marica Szendry was born near Plovdiv, Bulgaria and grew up in Portugal. She moved to the UK to study English Literature in 1997 and has lived in London since then.
