Post-war Reconstruction

Thu, 12/15/2016 - 19:14 -- Sejdina

You hang around the living room

And lay around the bedroom.

And you run through small, tiny, microscopic parts of my body,

YOU, the two in the trio.

Would I love you?

The bigger question is would you love me.

Nonetheless...

When I run down the Croatian beaches, I run after you.

And when I take the next plane home, I search for you.

And when I ask, I ask about you.

What was that last street you stood on?

How did it happen?

Who did?

Why?

Oh.

And I use the small, gooey stories mistaken as memories to smoosh together a form of you in my small head to fill it to the brim with more memories that I couldn’t help and take from my father...

Remember how you would laugh?

Because I remember my father remembering that time you laughed...

Or my mother remembering that one time…

That ONE time she helped you hide that liquor.

And I want to shove my foot into every footprint you made on the Dinaric Alps.

And I want to sit on the stool of your favorite bar and watch my feet dangle, wondering if they would ever reach the length of yours.

And sometimes I’m so selfish that I think I should have filled that hole when it was so morbidly and courageously carved into your heart.

And sometimes I’m so selfish that I think I should have been that last drink.

And sometimes I want to be that big brother...that little brother.

Because I can shove the pieces of a dismembered you back into the loose soil and maybe, possibly save some of the scraps for myself.

How does a small, tiny, microscopic you thrive off that lonely part of a memory thief like me?
 

This poem is about: 
My family
My country

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