War, Dream & I’m looking for you
by Milica Mijatović
War, Dream
If you’re quiet enough, you
can almost hear nothing,
the kind of nothing that scares
you into thinking you’ve gone
deaf, except you haven’t
because your sister is screaming,
except she isn’t even born yet,
and neither are you, but you’re
definitely here, your tears
are bodies falling
only two klicks away,
you’re here, and you’re running
toward what looks like a finish
line, except here finishes
don’t exist, and even though
you know whom you’re running
from, you turn around to look
one last time at your burning
home, except it isn’t your home,
it isn’t even your war,
but you are here, and you grip
your chest because something
in there aches, but your sister
is screaming somewhere
in the distance, so you have no
time to grieve, not while the alarms
are sounding, not while the troops
are marching, not while your people
are watching, except no one
is here but you
Milica Mijatović is a Serbian poet and translator. Born in Brčko, Bosnia and Hercegovina, she relocated to the United States where she earned a BA in Creative Writing and English Literature from Capital University. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University and is a recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in The Louisville Review, Poet Lore, Consequence, Santa Clara Review, Barely South Review, Rattle, and elsewhere.
About “War, Dream” Mijatović writes, “‘War, Dream’ is about a recurring dream I’ve had since childhood. I come from a war torn place, and I wasn’t even born until after the war had officially ended. I was only two when the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia happened in 1999. So in a lot of ways, I feel I’ve inherited war. This poem attempts to explore the complexities, the consequences, and the presence of war in my life.”
About “‘I’m looking for you” Mijatović writes, “Back home, there’s this house across the street that was ruined during the war and abandoned. It’s been that way for a few decades now, and no one knows whose house it is, not anymore. ‘I'm looking for you’ is a poem about loss and rubble and absence. It’s a poem about an aftermath, about dealing with said loss and rubble and absence.”