This Black Friday (Yanita Georgieva)

I’m finding it hard to say no

& anyway, what’s fifty dollars 

to a London girl?

One email tells me I’d look good in lilac

so, of course, I buy the jumper.

The next suggests

my boyfriend will love me more

in headphones & I think

now hang on a minute, & it says

let’s not take any risks, so I buy them.

Then the emails start getting specific:

Are you sick

of the squeaky bedframe

you spent four hours putting together?

then another, wouldn’t you like to be loved

on a crowded train?

& a gentle suggestion,

how can you suffer

in a black sequin dress – maybe then

I’ll be better, hold the mundane 

in my palm like a Food Network host

laughing at salad, maybe 

in the world of this jumper I am the same but

different, electric, so I buy everything

give them my money & feel good

because I have something to offer

& they have so much to give me. 

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

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image: Jade Hawk