Natalia like a tree

Yesterday at this time, she was weeding the dirt of everyday life from the staircase. Today she intends to get back on her feet, return to her roots. A strong resolve to improve!

Natalia came to the conclusion that the soil is damn hard. Especially the one in her barren pots with the protruding stumps of disabled plants. So what else can she do but dump it, anywhere, as long as it doesn't hinder her growth and development? She threw it on the floor. Natalia likes plants. She

'd like to run and play, but they've long since begun to fade like autumn weeds peeking maliciously from between the sidewalk slabs. Once, long ago, that was life. Discos, dancing, sex, alcohol. She was drawn to the forbidden. But the forbidden ends with the receipt of a large bag and a snotty handkerchief. From her parents, of course, because how else? She said goodbye to her would-be lovers in a different way, giving herself and a lock of curly hair. For the next few years, they ran around clubs and pubs, telling each other stories about Natalia. Now flowers are like family, flowerpots like a neighborhood of friends, the earth like air. And yet

, the sun sometimes seems similar to the way it was years ago. Natalia, enduring and unchanged for years, suppresses her centuries-old fears, transforming them into veils of ivy growing under the ceiling, her roots stealing sleep. She stands for hours in the middle of the room, soaking her socks in the dry earth, imitating a tree. Sometimes she throws open the windows, summoning the courage of her branches. She wants to be brave like a tree! She wants to be a tree! Then, sometimes, some roadside thug will call her "fucking cunt," or a neighbor will call the police. And she calmly turns around and pretends to be a tree again. Such a strange Natalia, with the earth beneath her feet.

Today, Natalia is not her own. She inhales the air like cigarette smoke. She sways sleeplessly from side to side. Today, the clouds are thicker and the sun darker than usual. Natalia's eyes are sealed shut by the hard shell of her shrunken eyelids, her thoughts swirling like autumn leaves. It's not hard to guess that she finally runs out of the room through the window, falls like a branch broken in the wind, and only the people turn around, united by the crack, a cloud of birds violently bursting into the air like a missile.

Natalia was like a plant in the white hospital room, like a snowdrop. And then the thought occurred to her that perhaps she hadn't meant it this way at all. For years, she withered, tearless, the tough Natalia, buried under the cemetery birch, grew on her own belly.