An Open Wound - Tanja Bakić

An open wound
Under the hot earth
Calls me out.
I look at the sky
With another’s eyes.
A star like
An eyeball
Stares at me.
I leave behind
What I once used
To be.
And keep my pain.
Velvet I am now.

Your luminous body
Casts up
Mine as a shadow.
A tear falls
Onto a bone.
In the water,
Under the water,
Naked I swim.
This night
Velvet muffles
The dream,
Water,
Me.

The winter of my pain
Touches with its fingers my body of dreams.
A voice within the voice
Whispers to an ear within the ear.
Water drinks me while I drink the water itself.

The secret of her tear
Hides in her wish
To embrace the light.
The light sullies her,
Wrenches the tear
From its roots,
Taints it with the world.

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Tanja Bakić (born 1981) Montenegro
Translated by Jim Phelps
Source: Words Without Borders