Self-Portrait in 2019, Thessaloniki

Some lover once told her
her spit lacked
the salt of Mediterranean;
her words could not be written
with the help of any alphabet;
her breath could never harmonize
with a bouzouki’s twangs.
Most likely, these are the reasons
she’s been learning Japanese.

She is often spotted trudging
along Nea Paralia
during the wee hours,
like a virus without a host,
in search of a Shinto shrine.
She carries an oil-paper umbrella,
spreading its bamboo spokes apart
under a tearless sky,
rotating its blossomed plate
while her okobo sandals
recite tunes played on koto strings.
She’s initiating her dance,
asking the gods to guide her path.

She wears a comfy polyglot yukata
bearing some dragon’s purple scales,
some bandicoot’s orange fur,
and an Italian plumber’s red cap.
On her face she has glued
a Noh mask of a woman;
ghostly skin, bloody smile
and peepholes for eyes,
balanced over inky ivy sticks.
She used to love her mask
but the waves retreat at its sight—
and that kills her.
She’s currently using it
only to smother her sobbing.

The gods haven’t responded.
Maybe they’re too far to hear.

She drags her feet back home,
crawls into her futon,
debones cookies with the prayers
her Christian therapist suggested.
But there’s an alpha and an omega
on the prescription note, and her mask
doesn’t read those sounds aloud.
She squeezes those orisons
into haiku syllables. Or are they tanka?
Only Kazantzakis could tell the difference,
as his ear leans towards the parched lips
and asks her to repeat—this time
while taking off the mask.

Chryssa Chatziandreou is an undergraduate at the School of English of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She is passionate about reading English, Greek and Japanese works of fiction and poetry. She loves learning languages and is currently attending classes for Japanese and Swedish.