Someone I know is dying this summer, and
someone else I know is pregnant
after a long time of trying, and
isn’t that life, and how wrong it is
to use them for symbols.
My hair sticks to my neck
a fly buzzes in the curtain lace
the breeze is barely
a breath, the bedroom window
stays open and
outside,
the neighbour’s children squeal and splash
jumping in and out of the garden
pool, coaxing each other into
a bigger cannonball, Again! Go again!
In the last 24 hours
I’ve been 4 & 11 & 34, and
an age I don’t know.
Floorboards creak under my feet
from one room to the other.
Every time I return to the desk
there’s a different person there.
Katja Knežević is an award-winning poet, writer and a co-founder of the Brussels-based Wordcraft Collective. She writes in English and Croatian.