Dadia Forest, Alexandroupoli
Who am I? Maybe I should introduce myself.
The air says ghost. I say the burned tree.
To choose carefully your supplies in dying
draw yourself from memory: whose greens in leaves,
whose yellows in bees, whose scents in springs:
the inpainted tree’s.
I chose charcoal,
I chose to become a ghost—call my death my conflagration.
The air draws on everything, confabulations
coming from the burned passages or
Facebook: a Turkish trafficker talking on his phone:
women take the path leading nowhere,
separated children are such precious cargo.
The air ashes
everything: a path to nowhere, mothers’ tears.
Mark how tears run down their cheeks,
how they leave a trail of grayish mauve dots (me!) on the skin,
how they still when they know what they know.
But despair trusts the euro banknote: the golden ticket
into a better future for the kids or
Frontex.
The air says ghost and other trees are still
burning. The air says ghosts live in the dream world.
The air says ghost. I say the burned tree.
To choose carefully your supplies in dreaming
draw yourself from memory: whose blues in school doors,
whose messages in mirrors, whose scents in springs:
hers.
She chose charcoal,
I chose to live—call my dream life her conflagration.
She draws on everything, confabulations
coming from the back or
bar: a barman talking on his phone:
the girl shall take the path leading nowhere,
cigarette ash and something precious in her drink.
She ashes
everything: her path back home, her one and only sip.
Mark how the liquid runs down her throat,
how it leaves a trail of grayish mauve dots on the epiglottis,
how instincts trust themselves when they know what they know.
And something’s wrong: she can feel it
in her bones. In love she throws your Karelia ash in her drink or
proves her trust.
The air says ghost but other Frontex officers are still
in Alexandroupoli. I say I live here; she breathes, “Enough.”
ATHENA MELLIAR is a feminist poet who lives and writes in Athens, Greece. Athena is a philologist specializing in educational and developmental psychology. Her work has appeared in Magma Poetry, Harpy Hybrid Review, Neologism, The Coachella Review, So to Speak, and elsewhere. Twitter: @AthenaMelliar, Instagram: @athenamelliar
NOTE ON POEM | “The burned tree” delves into the catastrophic conflagration that consumed Evros in August 2023 and ultimately obliterated the Dadia forest in Alexandroupoli, Greece. Many people—among them many asylum seekers and refugees—were found dead in the forest. After the fire, migrant smugglers and human traffickers resumed their operations exploiting refugees, even advertising their operations on social media platforms. The Evros conflagration—the EU’s largest blaze in decades—destroyed an area larger than NYC.
