The House of Bygone Times
When I wasn’t very big
I remember how everyone smoked, everywhere
the mothers gritted their teeth—
or sometimes not
The fathers worked and didn’t come home
even when they were at home
The mothers wore their hair in rollers, got fatter or thinner
The mothers stirred vats of food, drank coffee
and the only excuse for a break was a cigarette
The fathers had lovers
sometimes the mothers did, too
There were slapfests between them, between us
The mothers drink in secret
Hoping to make this existence more liveable
The fathers still don’t come home
The kids bring themselves up, somehow
the parents deny having done anything wrong
Oh, those traumas of yours aren’t our doing
We have nothing to do with that
The winters were deep and categorical
we all suffered together, albeit separately
A united mournful past
The kindergartens, they had lice
they shaved our heads there
they called us names there
I don’t recall ever seeing a stove lit there
even though I once burned myself on one
The memory is not warm
The memory does not exist at all
Not because it was bad
It simply was not good
And Mom was a child
And so was Dad
And there was no time, place or possibility left for me
Antoniya Atanasova is a person in constant awe, an alchemist, a constant seeker for touching stories. She is the author of Mono, nominated for a debut novel award by the National Book Center, the short story collection The Procedure of How to Forget a Person, and the novel Formaldehyde.
Angela Rodel is the winner of the International Booker Prize 2023 for her translation of Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter. She lives and works in Bulgaria. Rodel holds degrees from Yale and UCLA, and has received NEA and PEN translation grants. Her translation of Georgi Gospodinov’s The Physics of Sorrow won the National Book Center’s 2015 Peroto Prize for best translation from Bulgarian. Her poetry and prose translations have also appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, including McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, Granta, and Words Without Borders. In 2014, she was awarded Bulgarian citizenship for her translation work and contribution to Bulgarian culture. Rodel has also sung in a Bulgarian folk band, acted in a Bulgarian crime drama, and starred in a film, Kozelat, in which she rides a goat.
