While I was walking in the street,
I saw a guy get out of the car
with a gun in his hand.
He put it in his sweat suit pocket . . .
At that very moment
he realized I was watching him.
There was a threatening look in his eyes,
like, “I’ll do you in too, bitch.”
I quickly looked the other way.
I’ll pretend I saw a bouquet of flowers,
not a real gun.
The most important thing is to stay calm.

The next moment I didn’t care any more.
I waited for the bullet to hit my back.
As if something itched me
and he was only to scratch that place.
I watched the moon up in the sky.
It was at the full.
This is a perfectly good time for me to die.
Anyway, I felt as if I had broken off
from everything in my life.
Collected, after a bath, having brushed my teeth,
before bedtime.

People were putting out TV sets and old furniture.
A real invasion of sweaty characters
in their undershirts and sandals,
piling silently on the lawn
all that rusty, zincked iron, chromium-plated aluminum
and the rest.

It looked
as if they too had decided to start from scratch.
The only thing left for them to do is take out the garbage
and the guy with the gun and the sweat suit
can come to ice them all.

The dude must have sent a memo
to building tenant groups,
“Killer makes house calls.
Before you die you must get rid of old furniture.”

Over there,
at the second skyscraper block,
kids play hide-and-seek.
They don’t have a clue
a gink follows me with a gun in his pants.
“Whom do you like more, Martina or Mirela?”
A girl asked another
while they ran trying to hide.
I didn’t hear the answer.