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Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry
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Winter 2009, vol 7 no 4
 

HAIBUN
 

About Physics
Ludmila Balabanova

 

My father and I are walking down the street. It is our street. I have grown up there and know every stone and every tree. We are approaching the concave pavement in front of the hospital's entrance. When I was five a man jumped from the top floor. The concavity has been there since then.

I ask my father if he remembers. He looks at me in astonishment. "You've grown up. You've studied physics. The human body can't make a concavity in stone. The pavement is lower so the ambulances can pass."

I look at the pavement. Yes, it is for the ambulances. I'm not sure if I do remember. He might have flown straight up into heaven.



beyond the equator –
there are other stars
in the sky

 


Ludmila Balabanova Ludmila Balabanova lives in Sofia and teaches at the Technical University. She is the president of Haiku Club Sofia. Publications include three poetry books, two haiku collections (Cricket song, 2002, motes in the sunbeam, 2007) and poems in anthologies and magazines. She is an editor of Bulgarian Haiku Anthology Mirrors (101 Bulgarian Haiku selected and edited by Ludmila Balabanova, 2005, Bulgarian, English and French).