Nina looked down at the river. Then she stepped back from the ledge.
She turned and walked down the stairs, past the graffiti of a faded dragon, past the abandoned bicycle on the fifth-floor landing, out into the courtyard where a neighbor was hanging laundry and a stray cat was licking its paw. nino haratisvili vos-maa zizn- skacat-
Vos moya zhizn? she whispered to the wind. Here is my life. Nina looked down at the river
Nina smiled. This was her leap. Not falling — flying. Vos moya zhizn
Not the life she had planned. The life that had happened. The one where she loved a woman named Mariam in secret, then shouted it at a family dinner, then watched her grandmother cry and her uncle throw a plate at the wall. The one where she left for Berlin with a suitcase and a half-finished manuscript, where she washed dishes in a Kreuzberg café, where she learned German from old detective novels and the silence of her own loneliness.
Here is the story: Nina stood at the edge of the Tbilisi rooftop, her toes curling over the rusted iron ledge. Below, the Mtkvari River dragged its muddy green body through the sleeping city. Behind her, the door to the stairwell hung open, rattling in the October wind.
