A page I kept but never read

Written in Tbilisi, February 2022. Typed up today.

The bread was still warm when he handed it across the counter. I held it with both hands for a moment before putting it in my bag.

I had walked down the hill from the old part of Tbilisi to find something to eat. The streets were wet. The air smelled like stone and exhaust. A dog slept in a doorway across the road, undisturbed by the passing cars.

The man behind the counter tore a sheet from a newspaper stacked near the oven. He wrapped the loaf, tucked the edges under, pushed it toward me without looking up. The oven behind him filled the room with a dry heat. His fingers moved without hesitation. I paid in coins.

The bakery was one room with a glass counter and three trays. No queue. No music.

I unwrapped the loaf back in the room and ate half standing. Outside the window there was a courtyard with one tree. The page had gone limp from the warmth. I could smell the bread through the newsprint. Georgian script filled one column, and below it a photograph of a building I didn’t recognise. I folded the page and slipped it into my notebook. The other half I ate on the bed.

I kept it there for months. Carried it through three more countries, pressed between a bus ticket and a receipt from an Ohrid guesthouse where the mattress had dipped. The ink smudged. The paper thinned at the creases.

I never worked out what it said. Something to do with the building, or maybe not. He had hummed while wrapping it, like it was the most ordinary thing. I thought about asking someone to translate it. Never found the right person. The script looked nothing like anything I could read. Still can’t read it.

That’s all I wrote down.