F a n i A v r a m o p o u l o u —

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i dreamt of finding tiny horses in my hair. the time i was in was not a uniquely violent time, but my exposure to violence was novel. i scrolled. i watched missiles explode inside my screen. i read a book of mistranslations, and i read a book about narrative. i was caught in the middle of a very long story and was afraid of how it would end. i galloped across a threshold. i jumped to conclusions. i steadied myself inside the turning point. i started again. i bought a bottle of rose water. i saved a recipe for meringues shaped into swans. i'd gotten very sentimental, grown into my cynicism and also out of it. i caulked the corners. i made tea. i bought a deck of french tarot cards. i organized a card-playing tournament. i scrolled. i was surrounded by kindling, putting out small fires again and again. i tried to train away my shortsightedness by looking into the distance. i saw fire planes in my sightline, watched as their bellies dipped into the sea. i kept up to date on the progress of the burn. i kept up to date on the news. i spit watermelon seeds from the balcony and watched them fall until they disappeared from sight, long before they reached the ground.

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i tested scripts, i studied. i made rash decisions and was better off for it. every act was done in reverse, in search of its mirror image. i read a story about people falling in love with software. i read a story about a wave. i attempted to excavate my body, drawing sensation out like a leech. i exploited my blood for its language. i dressed and undressed, built systems and abandoned them. words preceded their meanings, imitating the patterns they observed. i forgot what i sound like when i write. i lost my mouth, my tongue. i dreamt that my teeth got taken out with the trash. what does that mean, to sound like. i tossed and turned. unable to sleep, i paced around. it was storming outside, and the wind was rattling the blinds.

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i dreamt that i was pregnant and alone in an unknown city. i dreamt about winning money. i walked on the sidewalk and in the street, saw a woman i recognized but couldn't place. i read a novel about an earthquake that never ends. i didn't feel like writing, because everything that needed to be written was already out there, waiting to be disassembled and rearranged by human writers or algorithms, or by marketing managers selling the virtues of bombs. i listened to a story about a funeral procession held for an bomb-sniffing robot. i practiced my greek, my english. the more i measured my progress and abilities, the further i fell. i applied for jobs that i believed to be harmless and boring. i tried to stay positive. i read a book about violence tucked covertly inside the language of the nazis. i conceptualized language as a kind of algebra, and tried to scrutinize every word. i looked for variations of red inside each grapheme. i lifted the hood, and tiny bright salamanders scattered all over the page.

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