I wasn’t a girl back then. I was wearing nylon dresses with clay sleeves. I was wearing heels and bracelets made of muddy pretzels. Back then, only mothers delivered babies. I wasn’t a girl back then. The zipper of the days pulled up smoothly to the chest. I wrapped my hips in plaid evenings. Sadness grew clearly, its cogs screeching. Mothers were anthills and we could have taken shelter. I would surprisingly put on their raincoats as big as a house. And then, suddenly tall,

Translators’ Note: the words in italics are in English in the original. Zugló is a suburb of Budapest. She was standing by the philodendron, watching the apparatus make one last click. For days she thought that the sound came from the plant. These days they come up with so many new things. Would she have been really this naïve? That was also Jack's fault, like many other things. I wonder when he'll figure out that this thingamajig has croaked; perhaps he'll notice it as soo