To the unborn daughter
Shall I write you a letter?
If you stay this time,
if you become mine,
if into the placenta I’m preparing for you
you let your roots grow,
if you from me not go –
read it to remember yourself
when only I knew you.
(Into the sterile building with a heavy door
I am coming with you.
I am going out alone;
like that, since the time known.)
You should know as soon as now
that we’ll part one day.
But don’t be afraid,
it won’t happen in no time.
I’ll give a letter to you while saying goodbye.
In it, there’s a dream about you.
(My body is a swollen balloon
made of painful wounded tissue.
The needles are long, and reach the shores of my darkness.
Shall I write you a letter?
So that I tell you about the wish
before the calendar, injections and face-masked people?
(Cold, slimy mass on my skin.
Your heart is maybe beating
in my swollen womb.
You’re maybe alive.)
If it comes true,
if you make my dream come true,
then remember me from the time
when I was waiting for you,
before the white hard bed and latex gloves;
before the pain spread;
before me awake, of sleeping instead.
(Into the sterile building with a heavy door
I am coming with my heart full of you.
I’m going out empty.)
Dry paper is crumbling under the fingers,
its powder is falling onto the cheap linoleum of waiting rooms.
I don’t remember hospitals’ addresses,
I don’t know the white-uniformed people’s names.
On which star does your soul dwell, my angel?
Translated from Serbian into English by Maja L. Markovich
and English translation proofread by Dushica Ivanovich