You see a sentence written in cyrillic. Some of the letters are familiar. You see the meaning shimmering underneath the surface. You almost grasp it, but it slips away. The letters on the page mock you silently.
You know this Czech word. You’ve already learnt it in Polish. It is not the same word. It is a grave insult. Your slavic friends are shocked and embarassed for you when they hear you speak it.
There is a sentence in Croatian. There is a sentence in Serbian. There is a sentence in Bosnian. They are all the same sentence.
You have to write about your day in Slovak. You spend the night polishing the draft. You fail your assigment. It’s written in Czech. You don’t know Czech.
P is not what it seems. You have to remember that.
The Croatian sentence does not mean what the Bosnian sentence means. They both mean the same in Serbian.
That word has a diminutive. The diminutive has its own diminutive. The diminutive of the diminutive also has a diminutive. Nobody knows what the final diminutive of a word is. Some say the knowledge had been lost in centuries past and matrioshkas are the echo, the tangible warning left for us to remember. No living creature should hold the means of diminishing something into nonexistence.
Others say you may still find some of them in old soviet textbooks, if you dare to look in abandoned schools of Chernobyl.
Someone is speaking to you. Is that a he or a she? You aren’t sure. It’s an abstract concept. Why does it have gender.
You see a word in a dictionary. It has seventeen letters and only one vowel. You close the dictionary very carefully not looking at the phonetic transcription. The shape of it haunts you in your sleep. You wake up face damp with tears, a bitter taste on your tongue. The clock blinks 3:03AM. You do not dare look up that word again.
This word means the same thing in the five slavic languages you’re familiar with. You use it in the sixth one. That word does not exist in this language. It never did. There is now a word-shaped void in the fabric of this language. The natives look at you uneasily. There is a new quality to the silence and your palms start to sweat.
H is not H. H is not H. H is not H. H is not H.
One day you flip through your dictionary. A page is missing. What was the word? You can’t remember. There is pressure building at the back of your head. The clock blinks 3:03AM.
You write my name is in cyrillic. There are shadows dancing on the walls. They grow longer with each letter you write down. It is not cyrillic you’re using. You keep writing my name is. The shadows now bleed from the tip of your pen. It’s irrelevant. You need to remember the right letters.
N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not… If only you could remember the letters. The letters are important. What was it, that wasn’t N?
There are nine different prefixes you can add to a verb to change its meaning. There are fifty three different suffixes you have to add to a verb to make it work. In the end the only thing left of the original is a vague shape of one of its middle consonants. You can feel the anguish radiating from the verb’s mutialted form. A desperate sob escapes through your clenched teeth. You’re so, so sorry, you didn’t meant to. You didn’t. It doesn’t matter.
You now read a text in Russian. You’ve never learnt Russian. Why are you reading that text? The words burn your eyes, the meaning searing your mind.
There’s a shot of vodka in front of you. You don’t drink alcohol. You don’t care. All existence is meaningless, your soul’s in eternal pain. A broken matrioshka lays at your feet. There is no salvation, she says boring into your eyes. You open your mouth to answer, but there is only a burst of harsh rustle. It dies in whispering echoes a moment later. Your glass is empty again.
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