Vasileia Oikonomou (Greece)

Simone

Simone, take off the apron
Leave the dishes wet
I don't want anything dry
in a room with you

Come watch with me
the ships foundering in our sink
Our little dead fish
as they gather in the drain

Do you think there is a paradise, Simone?
Underneath the little aluminum holes
A paradise full of soap
and apple scented detergents

And maybe i would be cleansed once and for all, Simone
if i slipped along with the fish
If i rode a ship
and declared this underground city
for my own

Imagine Simone, the coffee you were preparing
while i was in such a hurry to leave
Imagine it swimming back to us
with all its bitter comfort

Oh Simone, all things
- and maybe even I -
deserve a second chance
sometimes

Vasileia Oikonomou was born in 1983 in Piraeus. She studied History at the University of Ioannina. Her first book of poetry “Το υπόλοιπο της αφαίρεσης” (“Balance of Abstraction”, Govostis) was published in 2015 and was nominated for two literary awards. Her second book “Εφήμερα ζώα” (“Ephemeral Animals”, Thraca) was published in 2018 and several of her poems appeared in literary magazines and have been translated in English ,German, Slovenian, Macedonian and Croatian. She participated at the 2nd Young Writers Festival at the 12th International Book Fair (Thessaloniki, May 2015) , at the 35th University of Patras Poetry Symposium (Patras, July 2016) and also in “Ulysses Shelter” program, an international network of literary residencies for writers and poets ( Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, 2019). She is also the co-editor of Thraca literary magazine along with Thanos Gogos.