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Hajnal Csilla Nagy
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Scotland When I wanted to take grandma to Scotland, grandpa didn’t understand. I appeared in the door, told them where we’re going, and that grandpa, even though he looks like Kennedy would look, if he would have lived to be grandpa’s age, but grandpa is not coming with us. He’ll be governing the united states from home, after he decides which states he wants to unite. Grandpa can’t see the colour green well, so there would be no point in taking him to Scotland. He didn’t understand. Where are you packing? he kept asking grandma, but never waited for the answer, went back to the first room to open windows, I went after him, I’m going to bring her back, I kept saying, but grandpa was just shaking his head, no, and tirelessly iterated that he has to go. Days went by like this, I sat in the corner on my suitcase, grandma stopped packing, and just feebly watched grandpa opening the windows. He was looking for something, I have to go, he iterated, but not as if he was apologizing, or at least explaining anything with it, it was just the sentence becoming reality by getting further outside of his head. Finally one day I woke up and saw that grandpa painted everything green, and left the windows open, that night ivy climbed inside, grandma was already awake, she knew exactly what happened, but never explained it to me, grandpa was nowhere, left no message behind, only the colour, living and dead, that he could never see well, but still created to perfection. Mother The other day she thought out that we would only go to the beach after lunch, and before lunch we wake up and have a coffee in town, while reading the news of the day. She also added, that she decided she will become a man, and she laughed. The only thing she lacks is a dick, she said, but most man only has that on paper as well anyways. After this she expanded her wings, pulled a cigarette out from behind a feather, and I reminded her, that this isn’t a cheaper hobby than photography either. True, true. She kept laughing, even though for some time now she did not find anything funny anymore. I got my sense of humour from dad, right? And instead of being offended, or at least answering, she just flipped the half-smoked cigarette, and flew into the room next door on her unfunctional wings. |
Hajnal Csilla Nagy was born in Slovakia as a Hungarian minority, in 1992. She studied in Budapest, where she got a degree in comparative literature. Her poems and short stories were published in various periodicals, in Hungarian, Slovakian, English, Serbian, Turkish and Azeri. For her first book, she was awarded the Makó Medallions award for the best poetry debut of the year in Hungary. She is currently living in Istanbul, working on her second poetry book and first novel, with the aid of the Zsigmond Móricz National Scholarship for Literature, and is the online editor of the Slovakian-based Hungarian literary journal Irodalmi Szemle.
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