You should not let them in. Lest they stay, unbounded and lawless, claim squatters’ rights, build a fire from your photo frames, feed it the pages of your diaries, make a circle of salt ’round the table, brew tea in your samovar—not made for this country’s sockets—peer into the tea leaves and sigh. Turn away. You are not meant to love them.

If you’re not careful, one of them will pirouette into your living room, her body taut like a string of a cello—on her feet the red pointe shoes—you once saw in the shop window walking down the street with your mother who smiled, patted you on the head, pulled you closer and out of that little world of yours. On the way home, the cello long echoed in all of your four chambers.

Another will graffiti your bedroom ceiling with movie quotes in your native tongue, that you used to insert into daily conversations with family and friends, the lines that made you laugh—in the other voice—over and over, to tears. At three at night, the letters will stir and bleed onto your sheets. By sunrise, you will feel an itch under your skin.

Another will reach into the pockets of her apron, just like your grandmother’s, with a floral print—some light blue flowers you can’t remember the name of—and throw seeds. A birch will grow heart-shaped leaves in the corner by that window where each December, all the way through to February, you leave the K-Mart Christmas tree. And the floor under your feet will sway with light blue waves of forget-me-nots.

**

Irina Frolova is a Russian-Australian writer who lives on Awabakal Country. Irina’s creative highlights include her poetry collection Far and Wild (Flying Islands, 2021), the second prize in the 2021 Deborah Cass Prize for writing, and a longlisting in the 2023 University of Canberra VC International Poetry Prize.

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents