Justyna Mielnikiewicz
Spring arrives in Vera on the tail of supsarkisi, annual southern winds that whip down Mount Mtatsminda and roil the winter apathy out of our homes and bones while blowing the city’s smog to kingdom come. Then one day near Easter, all the plum trees in the neighborhood simultaneously burst with white blossoms. A couple weeks later, all the chestnuts down Belinski pop in green. No other Tbilisi neighborhood says spring better than my Vera.
I was walking our dog Ramzes, welcoming deep mask-free drags of the season now that Covid-19 regulations have been lifted, and we passed the garage cage where Shalva used to sit like a hookah smoking caterpillar on a wooden bench, watching the four little corners of our streets. Nothing got past him.
“Milk? Why did you buy milk?” he’d ask me with a contemptuous smirk.