Melanouri
Vasiliki Albedo
Even beauty will let you down on your way to the end of the Aegean, heading into the red flare of a sunset, the sea beckoning in the backwash, when a man twice your age, in naval uniform and a salt-bright gaze, approaches. You are sixteen; do not yet know how hunger wears a handsome face. Your Nirvana t-shirt clings to your back, air striking flint against your skin. Fear is a country you have yet to inhabit. Ouzo warms his breath in your ear. He calls you melanouri—sea bream, that fleeting taste of summer grilled whole in beach tavernas. Melanouri, from melas, for inky black— you sun yourself until you burn, your skin peels—it’s in your nature. You imagine the water swallowing its light, how easy it would be to follow. You too are hungry: you bite, writhe on the bait, unable to breathe, already being eaten by your own life.
Vasiliki Albedo‘s poems have been published in magazines including Poetry London, The Poetry Review, Oxford Poetry, The London Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review and Banshee. She was shortlisted for a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (Written) in 2024 and was a finalist in the Chad Walsh chapbook prize 2025. Sardines, a pamphlet written in collaboration with Lucy Holme, is out with Dialect Press.
