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"plaintext": "bonġu."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "this is probably where i am supposed to introduce myself properly."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i should say my name, where i am from, what this place is going to be about, what kind of things i will write here, and why anyone should come back. i should make it neat. give it a shape. maybe even pretend i know what i am doing."
},
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"plaintext": "so, my name is Nina Scicluna."
},
{
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"plaintext": "that part is true."
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{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "the rest is more difficult."
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
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"plaintext": "i live in malta, but not always the version of malta that people imagine first. not the postcard one. not the golden one. not the one that looks clean enough to be used by a tourism board and warm enough to make people forget rent exists."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "my malta is smaller than that, and louder, and more practical. it has scooters badly parked near corners, old balconies holding on out of pure stubbornness, staircases that smell different on every floor, keys that never come out of pockets when you need them, and people who open their doors just enough to take what they ordered."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "sometimes it is beautiful. sometimes it is just hot, tired, expensive, and full of somebody else’s noise."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "usually it is both."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i do not think places need to be romantic to be loved. sometimes you love a place because you know exactly where the pavement gets uneven. because you know which street will steal the wind from your chest. because you know where the app will send you even though the address makes no sense. because you have seen the same door open in three different moods."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "because the place has annoyed you long enough to become familiar."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i study social care."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "that sentence always sounds softer than the reality. people hear it and sometimes they imagine a certain type of person. patient, kind, naturally good, permanently available, probably drinking tea from a mug with a meaningful quote on it."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i am not that person."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "or maybe i am, sometimes, but not in the way people want. i can be gentle. i can listen. i can stay with someone when the room gets uncomfortable and everyone else suddenly remembers an urgent message they need to answer. but i am not made of endless patience. i can spend a day trying to understand people and then come home with no kindness left for the spoon i dropped on the floor."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i think that is one of the first things you learn, if you are honest."
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"plaintext": "care is not a personality."
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"plaintext": "care is a practice."
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "and some days, it is a practice you do badly, and then you wake up and try again."
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i do not study it because i want to save anyone. that would be too big and too clean, and i do not trust big clean stories very much. i study it because people sometimes need someone who does not disappear just because things became complicated. they do not always need a speech. they do not always need advice. sometimes they need the opposite of performance."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "someone who stays."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "someone who does not make their pain decorative."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "someone who can sit there and not demand a better ending by the end of the hour."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "beside school, i deliver food."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "this is not a metaphor, although it keeps trying to become one."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "most of the time it is just work. ordinary work. tiring work. the app beeps when you are already tired. someone gives an address like they are describing a secret from childhood. tourists do not know where they are staying. locals assume you know every entrance because of course you should. restaurants make you wait. customers make you wait. lifts are broken. stairs are everywhere. drinks leak. chips get sad. wind is personal."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "after a few hours, all food starts to smell like work."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "but there is something about it that i like."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "maybe because it is practical. maybe because nobody can make it too pretty while you are doing it. you are on the scooter, you have the bag, you have the route, you have the next mistake to solve. there is not much space to over-explain yourself."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i like that."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i like having a reason to move through the island without needing to look soft, grateful, polite, or available. i like the small hardness of it. the keys in my pocket. the helmet hair. the ugly address. the quick decision. the way the evening belongs to whoever is still moving through it."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "people talk about freedom as if it is always wide and bright."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "sometimes freedom is just not being required to smile."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "sometimes it is being allowed to be useful and annoyed at the same time."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "sometimes it is a scooter at night and the feeling that your body is doing something before your head can ruin it by thinking too much."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i have learned malta through routes more than maps."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "through entrances. through doorbells. through restaurants that recognise the bag before they recognise me. through streets that look close until you are the one carrying the food. through the strange private moment when a door opens and you see one second of somebody’s life."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a hallway light."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a child shouting from another room."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a woman still on the phone."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a man pretending he was not waiting right behind the door."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a dog convinced this is finally the event that will change history."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "then the door closes."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "that is all."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "you carry on."
},
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "there is something intimate about that, but not in a sentimental way. more like the island keeps showing you small pieces of itself by accident. not enough to know anything. enough to understand that every door is a border."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i think i have always been interested in borders."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "between public and private."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "between care and exhaustion."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "between softness and being handled."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "between speaking and keeping quiet."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "between the person people meet and the person who gets home, locks the door, and finally stops performing being fine."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "my flat is old."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "not charming-old in the way people like when old things have already been cleaned, photographed, painted, named, and made expensive. just old. modest. stubborn. full of things that work because they have always worked, and because nobody has forced them to become better."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i inherited it from my grandmother."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "legally, yes. emotionally, that is harder to explain."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "most people would probably say it needs renovating. they would not be completely wrong. there are tiles that have seen too much. corners that hold dust like a family secret. cupboards that open with a mood. walls that remember furniture which is no longer there."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "but i do not hate that."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i like that the flat does not ask me to become a new person before i can live in it."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "it is not perfect. it is not impressive. it is not designed for anyone’s idea of a good life. but it has a door i can close. it has a key that belongs to me. it lets me be alone without asking me to justify why."
},
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"plaintext": "that matters more than new tiles."
},
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"plaintext": "on my keys, there is a small charm from my grandmother. it is not valuable, i think. not in the way people mean when they ask if something is valuable. it is worn, ordinary, easy to lose if you do not know what it means."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i do not even know if i believe in keeping things for luck."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "but i have never taken it off."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "some things are not thrown away just because you cannot explain them."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "maybe that is also why this place exists."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "because i have things i do not want to throw away, but i also do not want to turn them into content too quickly."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a thought."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a photo."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a sentence i almost posted somewhere else and then did not."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a street after work."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a room after everyone leaves."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a language thing that gets stuck in my head."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a small feeling that is not dramatic enough for a confession, but not small enough to disappear."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i speak malti, english and italian. that sounds like a list, but inside my head it is messier than that. languages are not shelves. they leak. they borrow. they leave fingerprints on each other."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "greek interested me because of roots. i liked the feeling that words had bones. that if you followed them far enough, something opened. school words, official words, words that pretend to be difficult because they came dressed for an office."
},
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
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"plaintext": "arabic felt closer than i expected. not easy, exactly. just not foreign in the same way. malti had already left some doors half-open. not enough to walk through without learning. enough to make me feel that language can remember things even when people do not."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i like that."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i like when something is not simple, but still familiar."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "maybe that is also how i feel about myself."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i do not want to turn this into an identity page. i do not want to pin myself to the wall and label every part neatly so nobody has to wonder."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i am bisexual, but i do not want attraction to become a debate club. i do not want to prove balance, loyalty, seriousness, or whatever else people require when they hear a word and immediately start building a courtroom around it."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i like people. sometimes women. sometimes men. sometimes the energy arrives before the category catches up. that is enough."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "and honestly, i won’t sugarcoat it. i love kissing gorgeous lips, touching divine tits, feeling that soft, electric femininity against me. but i also love getting fucked by a hard, erect dick. yes. and if it comes as a package — both at once, bodies and mouths and hands tangled without having to choose — even better. i’d rather be honest than play soft."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i like femininity. i like eyeliner, soft tops, skin after showering, the little private theatre of getting ready even when nobody will see it properly. i like feeling pretty. i like knowing i can be pretty without becoming harmless."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "but i also like the other mode."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "hoodie, keys, scooter, tired face, practical hands, no softness on command. i like being able to say “i’ll handle it” and mean it. i like not being only the girl someone imagines before she has spoken."
},
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
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"plaintext": "softness is better when it is a choice."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "so no, this is not a manifesto."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i do not have one."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
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"plaintext": "this is my manifesto."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "no. manifestos are too loud for a first room."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "this is more like opening a window before deciding whether anyone is allowed through the door. this is me placing a chair in the corner, leaving the light low, and pretending i did not clean a little before you arrived."
},
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.blockquote",
"content": [
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "a room, maybe.\nnot locked.\njust not wide open."
}
]
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "roomy is my room."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "this little blog, maybe, is the drawer i open when the room is too small."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i do not know how often i will write here. i am not good at promising regularity. i often do not reply even when i meant to. my sleep is chaotic. i can be kind all day and then become sharp over nothing at night. i ask for help too late. i say i am fine in the tone of someone daring the world not to believe her."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "so do not expect consistency."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "expect traces."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "expect small things held up to the light."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "expect me to write around the thing before i can write through it."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "expect malta without the postcard."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "expect doors."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "expect keys."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "expect a scooter somewhere in the background, probably parked badly."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "expect me to be braver here than i am in real time, which is how writing usually works. in real life, i think of the perfect thing to say when the moment is already over. on a page, the moment waits. that is one mercy of writing."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "maybe this place will become personal."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
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"plaintext": "maybe it will stay private in public."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "maybe it will be a place for notes that do not know yet whether they are essays."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i like that stage of things."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "before the full shape."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "before the explanation."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "before somebody reads too quickly and decides they understand."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "for now, i only wanted to leave a first mark."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "not a performance."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "not an announcement."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "not a polished little biography pretending to be casual."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "just this:"
},
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
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"plaintext": "my name is Nina Scicluna."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "i have a room, a key, a scooter, an old flat, a tired body, a few languages in my mouth, and a habit of carrying other people’s things to their doors."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "somewhere between all of that, i am trying to learn how to stay."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "not everywhere."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "not for everyone."
},
{
"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "just where it matters."
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "and maybe here, sometimes."
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"description": "bonġu. this is probably where i am supposed to introduce myself properly. i should say my name, where i am from, what this place is going to be about, what kind of things i will write here, and why anyone should come back. i should make it neat. give it a shape. maybe even pretend i know what i am doing.",
"path": "/not-a-proper-introduction-ymcve17",
"publishedAt": "2026-05-31T08:05:48+00:00",
"site": "at://did:plc:7ri4dryhbevb3qwxqcjdr7uj/site.standard.publication/3mn4wph4a7tjt",
"tags": [],
"textContent": "bonġu.\nthis is probably where i am supposed to introduce myself properly.\ni should say my name, where i am from, what this place is going to be about, what kind of things i will write here, and why anyone should come back. i should make it neat. give it a shape. maybe even pretend i know what i am doing.\nso, my name is Nina Scicluna.\nthat part is true.\nthe rest is more difficult.\ni live in malta, but not always the version of malta that people imagine first. not the postcard one. not the golden one. not the one that looks clean enough to be used by a tourism board and warm enough to make people forget rent exists.\nmy malta is smaller than that, and louder, and more practical. it has scooters badly parked near corners, old balconies holding on out of pure stubbornness, staircases that smell different on every floor, keys that never come out of pockets when you need them, and people who open their doors just enough to take what they ordered.\nsometimes it is beautiful. sometimes it is just hot, tired, expensive, and full of somebody else’s noise.\nusually it is both.\ni do not think places need to be romantic to be loved. sometimes you love a place because you know exactly where the pavement gets uneven. because you know which street will steal the wind from your chest. because you know where the app will send you even though the address makes no sense. because you have seen the same door open in three different moods.\nbecause the place has annoyed you long enough to become familiar.\ni study social care.\nthat sentence always sounds softer than the reality. people hear it and sometimes they imagine a certain type of person. patient, kind, naturally good, permanently available, probably drinking tea from a mug with a meaningful quote on it.\ni am not that person.\nor maybe i am, sometimes, but not in the way people want. i can be gentle. i can listen. i can stay with someone when the room gets uncomfortable and everyone else suddenly remembers an urgent message they need to answer. but i am not made of endless patience. i can spend a day trying to understand people and then come home with no kindness left for the spoon i dropped on the floor.\ni think that is one of the first things you learn, if you are honest.\ncare is not a personality.\ncare is a practice.\nand some days, it is a practice you do badly, and then you wake up and try again.\ni do not study it because i want to save anyone. that would be too big and too clean, and i do not trust big clean stories very much. i study it because people sometimes need someone who does not disappear just because things became complicated. they do not always need a speech. they do not always need advice. sometimes they need the opposite of performance.\nsomeone who stays.\nsomeone who does not make their pain decorative.\nsomeone who can sit there and not demand a better ending by the end of the hour.\nbeside school, i deliver food.\nthis is not a metaphor, although it keeps trying to become one.\nmost of the time it is just work. ordinary work. tiring work. the app beeps when you are already tired. someone gives an address like they are describing a secret from childhood. tourists do not know where they are staying. locals assume you know every entrance because of course you should. restaurants make you wait. customers make you wait. lifts are broken. stairs are everywhere. drinks leak. chips get sad. wind is personal.\nafter a few hours, all food starts to smell like work.\nbut there is something about it that i like.\nmaybe because it is practical. maybe because nobody can make it too pretty while you are doing it. you are on the scooter, you have the bag, you have the route, you have the next mistake to solve. there is not much space to over-explain yourself.\ni like that.\ni like having a reason to move through the island without needing to look soft, grateful, polite, or available. i like the small hardness of it. the keys in my pocket. the helmet hair. the ugly address. the quick decision. the way the evening belongs to whoever is still moving through it.\npeople talk about freedom as if it is always wide and bright.\nsometimes freedom is just not being required to smile.\nsometimes it is being allowed to be useful and annoyed at the same time.\nsometimes it is a scooter at night and the feeling that your body is doing something before your head can ruin it by thinking too much.\ni have learned malta through routes more than maps.\nthrough entrances. through doorbells. through restaurants that recognise the bag before they recognise me. through streets that look close until you are the one carrying the food. through the strange private moment when a door opens and you see one second of somebody’s life.\na hallway light.\na child shouting from another room.\na woman still on the phone.\na man pretending he was not waiting right behind the door.\na dog convinced this is finally the event that will change history.\nthen the door closes.\nthat is all.\nyou carry on.\nthere is something intimate about that, but not in a sentimental way. more like the island keeps showing you small pieces of itself by accident. not enough to know anything. enough to understand that every door is a border.\ni think i have always been interested in borders.\nbetween public and private.\nbetween care and exhaustion.\nbetween softness and being handled.\nbetween speaking and keeping quiet.\nbetween the person people meet and the person who gets home, locks the door, and finally stops performing being fine.\nmy flat is old.\nnot charming-old in the way people like when old things have already been cleaned, photographed, painted, named, and made expensive. just old. modest. stubborn. full of things that work because they have always worked, and because nobody has forced them to become better.\ni inherited it from my grandmother.\nlegally, yes. emotionally, that is harder to explain.\nmost people would probably say it needs renovating. they would not be completely wrong. there are tiles that have seen too much. corners that hold dust like a family secret. cupboards that open with a mood. walls that remember furniture which is no longer there.\nbut i do not hate that.\ni like that the flat does not ask me to become a new person before i can live in it.\nit is not perfect. it is not impressive. it is not designed for anyone’s idea of a good life. but it has a door i can close. it has a key that belongs to me. it lets me be alone without asking me to justify why.\nthat matters more than new tiles.\non my keys, there is a small charm from my grandmother. it is not valuable, i think. not in the way people mean when they ask if something is valuable. it is worn, ordinary, easy to lose if you do not know what it means.\ni do not even know if i believe in keeping things for luck.\nbut i have never taken it off.\nsome things are not thrown away just because you cannot explain them.\nmaybe that is also why this place exists.\nbecause i have things i do not want to throw away, but i also do not want to turn them into content too quickly.\na thought.\na photo.\na sentence i almost posted somewhere else and then did not.\na street after work.\na room after everyone leaves.\na language thing that gets stuck in my head.\na small feeling that is not dramatic enough for a confession, but not small enough to disappear.\ni speak malti, english and italian. that sounds like a list, but inside my head it is messier than that. languages are not shelves. they leak. they borrow. they leave fingerprints on each other.\ngreek interested me because of roots. i liked the feeling that words had bones. that if you followed them far enough, something opened. school words, official words, words that pretend to be difficult because they came dressed for an office.\narabic felt closer than i expected. not easy, exactly. just not foreign in the same way. malti had already left some doors half-open. not enough to walk through without learning. enough to make me feel that language can remember things even when people do not.\ni like that.\ni like when something is not simple, but still familiar.\nmaybe that is also how i feel about myself.\ni do not want to turn this into an identity page. i do not want to pin myself to the wall and label every part neatly so nobody has to wonder.\ni am bisexual, but i do not want attraction to become a debate club. i do not want to prove balance, loyalty, seriousness, or whatever else people require when they hear a word and immediately start building a courtroom around it.\ni like people. sometimes women. sometimes men. sometimes the energy arrives before the category catches up. that is enough.\nand honestly, i won’t sugarcoat it. i love kissing gorgeous lips, touching divine tits, feeling that soft, electric femininity against me. but i also love getting fucked by a hard, erect dick. yes. and if it comes as a package — both at once, bodies and mouths and hands tangled without having to choose — even better. i’d rather be honest than play soft.\ni like femininity. i like eyeliner, soft tops, skin after showering, the little private theatre of getting ready even when nobody will see it properly. i like feeling pretty. i like knowing i can be pretty without becoming harmless.\nbut i also like the other mode.\nhoodie, keys, scooter, tired face, practical hands, no softness on command. i like being able to say “i’ll handle it” and mean it. i like not being only the girl someone imagines before she has spoken.\nsoftness is better when it is a choice.\nso no, this is not a manifesto.\ni do not have one.\nthis is my manifesto.\nno. manifestos are too loud for a first room.\nthis is more like opening a window before deciding whether anyone is allowed through the door. this is me placing a chair in the corner, leaving the light low, and pretending i did not clean a little before you arrived.\na room, maybe.not locked.just not wide open.\nroomy is my room.\nthis little blog, maybe, is the drawer i open when the room is too small.\ni do not know how often i will write here. i am not good at promising regularity. i often do not reply even when i meant to. my sleep is chaotic. i can be kind all day and then become sharp over nothing at night. i ask for help too late. i say i am fine in the tone of someone daring the world not to believe her.\nso do not expect consistency.\nexpect traces.\nexpect small things held up to the light.\nexpect me to write around the thing before i can write through it.\nexpect malta without the postcard.\nexpect doors.\nexpect keys.\nexpect a scooter somewhere in the background, probably parked badly.\nexpect me to be braver here than i am in real time, which is how writing usually works. in real life, i think of the perfect thing to say when the moment is already over. on a page, the moment waits. that is one mercy of writing.\nmaybe this place will become personal.\nmaybe it will stay private in public.\nmaybe it will be a place for notes that do not know yet whether they are essays.\ni like that stage of things.\nbefore the full shape.\nbefore the explanation.\nbefore somebody reads too quickly and decides they understand.\nfor now, i only wanted to leave a first mark.\nnot a performance.\nnot an announcement.\nnot a polished little biography pretending to be casual.\njust this:\nmy name is Nina Scicluna.\ni have a room, a key, a scooter, an old flat, a tired body, a few languages in my mouth, and a habit of carrying other people’s things to their doors.\nsomewhere between all of that, i am trying to learn how to stay.\nnot everywhere.\nnot for everyone.\njust where it matters.\nand maybe here, sometimes.",
"title": "not a proper introduction",
"updatedAt": "2026-05-31T08:39:50+00:00"
}