***
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.
***
© Tanja Bakić. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2017 by Jim Phelps. All rights reserved.
