The monsters of my childhood have died—
my father with his wishes that I had never been born,
my mother with her cup that cut
the thin flesh of my hand,
bleaching my heart
as white as a ghost’s,
or that stranger who
grabbed my then-body
so gently that I still confuse
love with rape –
they’ve all died. I ran
from one funeral to the next
and grieved,
I truly grieved,
even though I hadn’t said
their names in ten years.
Then I realized:
I have no one else to love.
Kamelia Panayotova is the author of the novel Anne and the poetry collection The Man Who Leaves, and her poetry collection Ausencias has been published in Spanish. Her poetry debut was shortlisted for the Peroto national award for contemporary poetry, she was the very first prizewinner of the Aleksandar Vutimski competition, and her poems have been published in Mexico, Spain, and in various journals in Bulgaria. Panayotova was an Elizabeth Kostova Foundation fellow in the 2024 edition of the Koprivshtitsa Poetry Conference.
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.
