formación, reflexión y amistad en la fe, con una mirada católica ~ en línea desde el 20 de junio de 2003 ~
I learned the words. But I never learned how to say goodbye in Georgian without it sounding like a door closing in a poem. Maybe that’s because there is no easy goodbye here. Just ნახვამდის — “until I see you again” — which is hope disguised as politeness.
You are gone. But qartulad , you still exist in every declension of my memory. In the wine-dark evenings. In the toast to the dead that comes before the toast to the living. In the way I cross myself passing a church, even though I stopped believing.
Qartulad means: I don’t just miss you. I feel your absence in the grammar of my days. Every morning without you is a sentence without a verb. Every night, a story left unfinished. dear ex qartulad
Not in English, where feelings fit neatly into boxes. Not in the language we used to order coffee or argue about rent. But in Georgian — raw, ancient, stubborn — where love is not just love but sikvaruli , a word that bends with suffixes like a vine heavy with grapes. Where “I miss you” is not direct, but circled through verbs and cases, like a prayer you learn by heart without understanding.
ნახვამდის, ჩემო კარგო. Until I see you again, my good one. I learned the words
Dear ex — I don’t want you back. But I want you to know: I finally understand what you meant when you said, "ქართულად ლაპარაკი გული მტკივა" — speaking Georgian makes my heart hurt.
Because some loves are like that. You don’t speak them — they speak through you. And even after the person leaves, the language stays. A ghost grammar. A motherland with no return visa. In the wine-dark evenings
Do you remember how you tried to teach me Georgian? "როგორ ხარ?" — How are you? "მიყვარხარ" — I love you (but literally: “You are whom I love” — the subject hiding, the object coming first, as if love always puts the other ahead).
si alguno oye mi voz y me abre la puerta,
entraré en su casa y cenaré con él, y él conmigo...»
