Ex Qartulad - Dear

— Not really goodbye. Just qartulad . Would you like a Georgian translation of the full post, or a shorter version for social media?

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).

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

So I’m writing this letter in the language you spoke in your sleep. The language your grandmother used when she cursed and blessed in the same breath. The language that holds three words for “morning” depending on how light touches the mountains.

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. — Not really goodbye

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.

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. Do you remember how you tried to teach me Georgian

ნახვამდის, ჩემო კარგო. Until I see you again, my good one.