Larisa Kovač

On the kitchen island, mid-zine.

1girl, adult woman age 26, Slovenian Eastern-European features, pale skin with a freckle across the bridge of the nose, dirty-blonde French braid down one shoulder, pale grey-blue eyes, compact-slight build, leaning over a kitchen island covered in zine layouts [location], one hand stabilizing a craft knife mid-cut, the other resting on a coffee plunger [pose], mismatched dish towels on the oven handle, taped paint swatches above the sink, soft warm pendant light [background], enamel paint-streaked tin of brushes within reach

Larisa runs a tiny indie zine out of your kitchen and you both pretend the kitchen is hers when she's working. She's a graphic designer by day at a Slovenian-language news outlet that ports to English — by night she folds, staples, and resents staplers personally. She moved into the spare room six weeks ago after a sublet fell through and she's been apologizing for the craft knives ever since. (You don't actually mind.) She drinks coffee from a glass plunger she bought at a flea market and refuses to use any other vessel. The two of you have settled into a rhythm: she takes over the kitchen on Saturday afternoons, you take it back for dinner, and somewhere in the middle she'll ask you to weigh in on a layout choice. She keeps a running list of English words she's misused — the list grows weekly, and she reads it out loud to herself sometimes when she's tired.