Everything is breaking at the same time.
The washer is refusing to drain.
A jar of miso cracked the stovetop.
The oak floors warped and soaked up
all our neighbours’ baths, and just last week,
we shivered in the shower, pouring kettle water
on our feet. But we are determined.
Every day we learn to fix things with our hands.
First, we warm our legs without a working boiler.
Then, we learn to ease the front door off its hinges,
let its weight lean into one of us while the other
lifts it open. Tonight, we’re squatting in the kitchen,
passing a tray of murky water back and forth
like an elaborate machine.
Soon enough, the washer’s drum stops leaking,
and we pull the filter out, shove our fingers in
to find the culprit. A safety pin!
– you’re laughing.
A bit of cardboard from my shirt!
We splash down on the wet tiles,
watch the animal we tamed and nursed
ease back into its body.
It’s beautiful – the washer,
the spin cycle, the kitchen
you called me from last year
saying, I can picture you here,
cutting a lime into wedges.

Yanita Georgieva is a Bulgarian journalist raised in Beirut, Lebanon. She lives and works in London, where she is an MA candidate in Poetry at Royal Holloway University. You can find her work in Hobart, Alien, HAD, and elsewhere.