"Vale" by Milena Makani
Content Warning: mention of suicide attempt
VA Smith | The Bowl
When it slipped through
the soapy marsh of your
hands while washing, I,
cities from you, was reading
Ocean Vuong’s “Nothing,”
where snow on his lover’s
beard melts to water in their
kitchen’s steam, where rye
bread rises, and they break
snow globe silence, tense
distance, with laughter.
Your voice text arrived
after I dropped head
to hands, elbows to knees,
eyes pooling as Barber’s
Adagio for Strings
pours from my living
room speakers, and I
listen to you telling me
how the blue waves bowl
we picked at West Elm
for your housewarming
gift broke, as the strings
grow louder, quiver
for several measures
then shatter, it seems,
return to adagio,
to brokenness, sorrow.
Though I wonder why
I trope breaking as
sorrow, as if to hold,
as a bowl, as our hands,
as a shovel filled with
snow in Vuong’s poem,
as Barber’s notes in
tension, means wholeness,
marks peace, a circling.
Much that has glued fast
our passions for decades
has been fractured, torn.
Our fathers dead in
the same clutch of years,
your search for a mate
stuck, buried, revived,
while mine tried suicide,
steadies his life on lithium.
I call you lovey, best boo.
There are no unbroken
circles, no bowls without
breakage, boo. That night
on my roof deck, tea lights
winking, you revisit
Annete Bening from
20th Century Women,
weep that I, winter
to your spring, must leave
you lonely for us,
for the bowl we’ve held
between us, jagged waves
cresting, buoying us
once more, before we break.
the soapy marsh of your
hands while washing, I,
cities from you, was reading
Ocean Vuong’s “Nothing,”
where snow on his lover’s
beard melts to water in their
kitchen’s steam, where rye
bread rises, and they break
snow globe silence, tense
distance, with laughter.
Your voice text arrived
after I dropped head
to hands, elbows to knees,
eyes pooling as Barber’s
Adagio for Strings
pours from my living
room speakers, and I
listen to you telling me
how the blue waves bowl
we picked at West Elm
for your housewarming
gift broke, as the strings
grow louder, quiver
for several measures
then shatter, it seems,
return to adagio,
to brokenness, sorrow.
Though I wonder why
I trope breaking as
sorrow, as if to hold,
as a bowl, as our hands,
as a shovel filled with
snow in Vuong’s poem,
as Barber’s notes in
tension, means wholeness,
marks peace, a circling.
Much that has glued fast
our passions for decades
has been fractured, torn.
Our fathers dead in
the same clutch of years,
your search for a mate
stuck, buried, revived,
while mine tried suicide,
steadies his life on lithium.
I call you lovey, best boo.
There are no unbroken
circles, no bowls without
breakage, boo. That night
on my roof deck, tea lights
winking, you revisit
Annete Bening from
20th Century Women,
weep that I, winter
to your spring, must leave
you lonely for us,
for the bowl we’ve held
between us, jagged waves
cresting, buoying us
once more, before we break.
A frequent Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, VA Smith’s work has appeared in several anthologies and in dozens of literary journals, among them: Southern Review, Calyx, Crab Creek Review, West Trade Review, Third Wednesday, After Happy Hour Review, and SWIMM. Kelsay Books published her first two collections, Biking Through the Stone Age and American Daughters, in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Her third collection, Adaptations, will be published by Green Writers Press in September 2025. VA’s bliss is traveling, cooking, hiking, and loving on friends and family. Visit her website at vasmithpoetry.com and her Instagram and YouTube @vasmithpoetry.
Milena Makani, born in 1984 in Sofia, Bulgaria, is a German contemporary artist based in London, UK. Makani’s deeply psychological paintings depict inner landscapes characterized by layered textures, fluid forms and gradients. Employing acrylics, watercolours and inks on mineral stone sheets, she blends control and spontaneity through the interplay of organic process and manipulation. Makani lives with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome - a source of constant pain. Her works channel the mindfulness, gratitude and energy of her lived experience, as she investigates themes of resilience, serenity, joy, stoicism and fragility.
The German artist has exhibited her work in the UK, Bulgaria and Iceland and her paintings are featured internationally in various private collections.
The German artist has exhibited her work in the UK, Bulgaria and Iceland and her paintings are featured internationally in various private collections.
