More poetry and babies is needed

I am reading my friend's poetry for the first time. It is older that our friendship and it was hidden for almost 15 years. He is not planing to publish it or anything similar, simply he felt that it is right moment to share it with me, after all this years. It was appropriate gift for my upcoming birthday! Trust packed into the  verses. 

Poetry does not belong to anyone, neither to author; poetry has it's own life. I love to compare making art/creative process with giving a birth to a baby; I went through both.

Once when get's out of you art becomes everyone's asylum. You are delivery person, participating in divine process of creation. The purpose is giving.

If you are using certain art form to make a living or simply to survive, than keep in mind that once when creative process is finished, your art does not belong to you anymore. Once when gets exposed to a human eye, ear or mind every person will see it differently; your art will become a mirror for someone's cognition of world, life or feeling. Be aware that you are doing it because you feel strong urge, stronger than sexual one, to shape your demons together with everything you once learned or experienced, imagined or dreamed of into the piece. 

Once everything gets out, you are baptized. 

Being a mother is the most important role for me and my biggest happiness, even though I understand completely that  in my life, except my hard work, nothing else is in my control. Life is erratic. 

If you give a thought to a fact that you are a parent and that you are guardian of someone's life as long as you live, you will understand that they are living in your time, but that you are not living in theirs. Their time is just about to become, and most likely it will happen in the meantime, while you are getting to tired and/or to old. Besides of being your children, they are also humans with their own will, their future dreams, fears and hopes; with their lives which exclusively belongs to them, not to their parents or their future children. 

They are beautiful artworks you witness existing; you can put your trust in them, your love and your prayers. You can guide them and be grateful and honored to play this role in screenplay called life. You should do your best to be a parent, a shelter, a listener, a friend, an angel guardian, but you should never ask for their gratitude at the end.  

You chose to be their parent, they did not had a chance to chose to be your children. 

That does not mean they are not thankful, it only means you need to let them be, and you need to be proud of them for whom they are. Nevertheless, allow to your children and to poetry to remind you what it is crucial in life; allow yourself to trust in unconditional love again.  

I admire to children and I adore poetry. I admire and adore the pureness of heart. So, I beg you do not try to be a role model to your children or to use them as extension of your youth in order for you to accomplish your failed ambitions. 

 I beg you not to interpret the poetry based on  author's biography, even if you personally know the author, or if the author is yourself. 

You say you love me, but you do not, my love.

You say you love me, but you do not, my love. 

Love cannot be squeezed into one word or defined using only language, simply  because it does not belong to language. Twist your head around, It's all around you,  All is full of love. I will not try to define it, I am not a fool. 

I love words as much as I love love, but I never believed that for me or for anyone else is possible to frame complexity of love into one word, regardless the language we use. Off course, I have tendencies to describe feelings, to get a little bit closer to understanding of my inner world. We are humans and we intent to be in control, but beauty of love is in the fact that it is our of the reach. It is divine feeling and completely intuitive. If you know why you love someone, you probably do not love that person. 

Do not say you love me, because you do not. We are not lovers, neither friends, even we strongly feel both. You will protect me, you said. You will help me and be there for me! - I have heard from you many times, while we were drinking and smoking on the balcony feeling confusion of our heartbeats and coldness of winter's nights.  But you are not able to keep up with your words. You are exiled from your dreams and feelings. Today I am your friend, but tonight you will love me again and be jealous while I am kissing the other man. I will sleep in your bed again, alone, while you will spend the night on the couch. We will have puzzling fight and feel bad tomorrow, texting to each other: "I am sorry!", but thinking: I do not want to lose you. 

Then, you will start to date a girl and insist on my presence there. We are friends, right? Then you will kiss her, but stare at me. And I will drink more and laugh harder, trying to make it easier and less awkward for all of us.  I do not want to witness your deeply superficial relations, but I am doing it for some sick reason and I pretend not to care. I do it because I understand what you do not. I understand why you think you love me. 

You need me to be the person seen with my eyes. You love the version of yourself created in our most intimate moments in the crowed places during the long, confusing nights. That is what it is all about; we manage to create our own universe in presence of others. We establish addiction of other ones presence, but we did not talk about it. 

If you ask me we should never talk about feelings; we should only feel and follow it. We should let it inspire us! Allowed it to take us where we cannot go all by ourselves. We should follow our intuition and let ourselves go. 

Anyhow, tomorrow we will only be friends. 

 You do not love me, my dear, you only understand that feels right to be near me.

 If you would love me, you would not have to say it, but I would still be able to read it. So, you are drunk again, right? You love me, but it is too emotional, than too sexual and eventually too complicated. Love is never complicated, believe me. Love moves galaxies and transforms weaknesses into the strength.

It is a strong force, stronger than the sea.  

You say you love me, and I believe you. 

I knew it before I heard the words. I believe you, because I feel you. But again, if you think you love me enough, I will prove you wrong. Because, babe, love makes you brave, it makes you foolish, but it does not makes you being friends with someone. 

Thank you for your love, but if you are only ready to offer me learned version of love, than I recommend you to learn how to love someone else. 

Love, hera

Starbucks tumbler, lentil soup and smashed Berlin

I dropped my Starbucks tumbler on the kitchen floor the first Monday morning after the New Year weekend. It was a plastic one that I'd bought in Berlin almost a year ago. 

My relation with material objects is very simple: I do not get attached to items- with exceptions of two books, my personal cure for melancholy. They have medical purpose, you will agree. 

I learned to share from the beginning, thanks to the fact that I grew up during the war. Whether it was food, clothes or toys, I had to share it and not only with my older sister, but with all the children in the shelter. 

So, when I grew up I continued to share everything with people. Except my boyfriends and my dogs. Maybe I was too possessive, who knows?

After marrying, building a home and then getting a divorce (when eventually life turned out to be heavier than we had thought), I left him and everything behind: my time, my passion, my dreams and also my nerves. But I gained it back again, by believing that new beginnings are inevitable, and that your most important possessions are within you. In the meantime I rebuild it all over again, but this time only and exclusively for my daughter and I. 

It is strange how much strength you discover yourself to have in the moment when you pass invisible border  between bad and worst. Overnight, from a divorced and single mother, I became a single mother of a child with autism spectrum disorder. 

It was devastating to understand that I am completely powerless to change this fact. After two days of crying, I decided: I will fight back! So I packed a bag and I went to Vienna and afterwards to Berlin to seek an ally in my personal war. 

It was my first time in Berlin and it was a love at  first sight. 

After walking alone down the beautiful streets and after visiting the Jewish museum I went to have a soup with an old friend. We sit there in some girly restaurant, full of handcrafts and flowers, ordering a chicken soup. After a while there a soup is delivered, but it is not the chicken one; it is lentil soup. 

So I stare at the fucking soup and my friend is staring at me, not understanding what is the problem. Do I want him to say to the waitress that she made a mistake with my order?

No, I say it is fine, I will eat lentil soup, because as much as we try to hide at least for a moment, we cannot escape from ourselves. There are constant reminders of who you are and what you are made of. 

So, I eat lentil soup for the first time after more than 20 years. I am eating it and it eats me. I eat what was uneatable during the war, when the only thing I could not stand even to look at was lentil.  

And here I am in beautiful Berlin, reminded of the only thing I have already spent years trying to forget, and understanding that no matter where you are, you will always have your personal baggage, and most likely it will be the one which shaped your character during your most fragile years. 

Within few days I went back to Sarajevo. I brought back some postcards and bad taste in my mouth. My daughter and I continue to fight back against the circumstances which threaten to shape her character. Luckily for her, she has a mother who is considered by many to be a lunatic, and who will raise awareness, change her lifestyle, change the world if possible, but who will not allow society, war or autism to make her daughter a hostage of her own life. 

We are far away from Berlin and without an ally. Yes, I smashed Berlin on my kitchen floor. I already have too much baggage anyway.

When I was younger I used to believe I need a man

When I was younger I used to believe

I need a man. 

I needed him to support 

Ideas, 

I would abounded myself 

after three days.

  

To share

Enthusiasm about promising or brilliant 

Almost possible plan.

Sharing is caring, 

I used to believe,

Criticizing without concrete arguments

Is not. 

He does not understands 

or supports me. 

Let's question our affection  

Our common interests, 

Our love. 

I needed a man to join 

Emotional roller coaster

of mine.

To share a passion 

For unpredictable, 

Trusting in Unknown, 

Spontaneously leading me, 

Into madness. 

I needed him to tolerate 

The storms I produce; 

To cuddle right afterwards. 

I needed him

To kiss me often

To kiss me good. 

To fight before sex

Now and again.

The storm is coming.

I needed a man 

To feel safe

From my demons

And dreams. 

When I was younger I used to believe 

I need a man.

Now I know

I want to need him again.

We have a room full of love, what shall we do with it afterwards?

Life is a map of the inevitable ends. Sometimes we found ourselves witnessing how our personal universe is falling apart. This awareness of losing someone who means world to you is speechless. Awareness that there is nothing you can do to make things right again, to gain love back or to collect broken peaces of someone's trust in you. You can feel coldness in touch, you can see distance in eyes, but you cannot go backwards. The footstep marks are lost in the snow which appear without announcement.  

We never meant to feel like that, but we do. Sitting across each other at the dinning table, sharing silence like in Prevert's "Breakfast", feeling hopeless, wounded and lost. Staring at the distance or at each other with eyes full of tears we saved for later, with the look of hunted animal, still expecting for the other one to save "us" in plural.  We are not ready to give up, but we simply do not know how to fix it. So we wait, because every word just makes the situation even more difficult. 

It feels like we are standing on the street while our house is burning.We want to scream but me cannot make a voice. We are afraid, hurt and simply not ready. We have a room full of love, what shall we do with it afterwards?

So we talk about that for days or months with everyone except with that person. We heal ourselves while having long contemplation followed by drinking sessions. We feel anger about person whom was visitor of our life, but whom refused to stay. We start to recall and underline all beautiful moments we share, or we use all bad memories to make worst-case scenarios of mutual future just for us to feel better, just to survive this very moment. 

So, we look terrible, feeling even worst than that and we keep on drinking and talking. In the middle of emotional breakdown our friends are feeling sorry for us, but they remain being supportive. We eat more, we practice more, we do everything we did not do while we were with that person, or we increase the intensity of doing things we did together, and all of that has only one purpose: to heal our broken expectations. 

Then we start to deny we ever loved that person. Claiming we were strangers from the beginning. Asking ourselves in present of our silent friends, what we were thinking when we thought this person was our soulmate/love of our life? 

Eventually, our friends get tired of us and start to avoid to continue with this kid of conversations, and we painfully understand why. In that moment we truly feel pathetic about ourselves and we decide that we have to let it go. Then we face reality, we notice that it is was not the doomsday and that everything is part of big force of movement, so we find our lost will for living and we proceed with our broken lives. 

After the healing process is done, we start to understand everything we did not eventually. We understand that life is full of inevitable ends and that we should always allowed ourselves to feel hurt, to feel sorrow, failure or betrayal.  We understand that we should allow ourselves to have a breakdowns caused by lost love, as well as to give ourselves a chance to love again. 

But above all, we understand that we shall never, but never allow ourselves not to feel. 

Mind Siege inside of the Triangle

I live inside of the triangle which can be seen on any geographic map of Europe, but I do not live in Europe. It is a hole in earth surrounded by beautiful, manifestly damaged landscape. Fog and pollution are not only in the air, they are in us;  in our noses, in our throats and in our minds. Our hair smells like smoked meat, despite our hair care product choices. We breathe pollution, we talk about pollution, yet do nothing about the pollution,  except wait for it to snow. In the end we live polluted lives. 

Yes, there is a love hate relationship between the town I was born in and me. I am not sure why a lot of people refer to it as a city. Perhaps because this disturbing place is a capital of the triangle called Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

It is an artificial country  and sometimes I am positive that I do not live in reality, that I live in existential novel- so most likely Camus invented me and placed me in this absurd triangle. 

We are so deeply frozen in some former and forgotten time that we have become an exotic destination for tourists while they are discovering Balkans within 7 days!

Of course, we were introduced to the world with a 4 year long siege in the 90's, when everyone who was not Bosnian had a chance to was not Bosnian had a chance to wintess the madness of war, and in some cases make a career out of it, while I ate 40 years old biscuits from suspicious-looking tins. I do not complain, I did not know any better back then, but now when I remember what we were eating (if we had anything to eat) I want to cry. Does anyone care what Syrian children are eating in this very moment? If they eat at all. 

The world had a chance to hear for us again when we burned our presidency building or when floods destroyed entire areas and dislocated mine fields. So, if you survived the war, now more than 20 years later you have a chance to kill yourself accidentally, if you step on the mine that water left behind in your private yard. Do not take it against the water, she was in a hurry. I just wonder how those people who dedicated their lives to removing the leftovers of war hidden in fields, forests and mountains were feeling when they understood that  20 years of their work of mapping and marking the mine fields  was washed away. 

But we do not mind anything, because we learned that things can always can be worse. Our minds are also under siege. We sing through, even we are not so brilliant as we would love to believe. Anyone/everyone can be a star here- you are a star if two or more people, not including parents, know your talent, and support your broken dream of being seen on national TV. We are hilarious.

So, we do not do anything about everything all together. We just wait for miracles, for better days, for the moment when war will end in our minds. We all suffer from PTSD syndrome, yet we  do not accept that such a thing exists.

We also collect the trash. It is everywhere. On the streets, in the rivers, on the grass, on the parking lots, on the tree's branches. It is our way to decorate our living space. Our trams, full of trash, are actually trash itself. They are donations of European countries and they are older than I. And I will be 29 in a couple of days. 

So, it is a love hate relationship. I love this ineffective place, because we have grown up together, we share good and bad memories, we have the same wounds, same dreams and we love the same writers. We maybe did not treat them as they deserved, but they are ours and we feel their melancholy. 

But I hate it also, because despite the fact that I have a bombshell in my apartment (I keep umbrellas in it,) I evolved into an independent young woman and I dream big for both of us. But I alone cannot make it happen. I need my town to wake up from this deep dark dream! I am ready to give it the kiss of life, but I cannot do more.  I can only continue with being frustrated by the fact that I am stuck here in the town which loves me, but does not understands me; the town which took from me my best years without asking what I think about it; and the town which defined my character and made me who I am, in the end. I truly want to leave it and eventually I will, but what makes me terrified is the thought that perhaps I will miss it when I am gone away.

Surreal 2015 and Big Bang of the Brain

Surreal 2015 started with the big bang of our brains. We trust we are in the future, but I think none of us were ready to fully embrace the chaos we found ourselves in; it is like being static but simultaneously moving ahead led by unknown force.

I had a lot of breakdowns during the year, mostly emotional ones. They were deep, dark and intimate, almost unspeakable. I felt like my body is cracking, while my soul is swelling under the pressure of  melancholy and sorrow. There is a homemade bomb within me; I build it with my previous lives. As everyone else, I have a tendency to die once in a while. Also, I have a very close relationship with death; she is like an old friend I did not hear from in a while, but whom lives deep down in my memories and in my heart.  Death is very present in our lives even if we are not aware of it or ready to accept it. Sometimes I feel it is the only constant part of life, only reality which exist, like if everything else what surround us is an illusion. Some learned lessons of living. Some human trying to stop the time and to put the frame on elusive appearance of life. 

Robert Frost once said: “In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”  I agree, it goes on and takes all my tears, fears, love and happy moments within, but what my life is made of? What is the essence of it? 

It is a palette of shades, of beautiful people, of following feelings, of produced  situations, of tenderness, of understandings, of dreams and dreamers, of believes and believers, of imagination and illusions; it is castle in the sand which I am constantly rebuilding despite all odds for rebellion. I heard once that good fortune follows the brave ones. 

So, the circle is closed. I am leaving my emotional baggage from 2015 on the side walk of December. I am barefoot while I am crossing the invisible line of fate in the future. I believe things happens, shit happens, love happens. I believe you happen to me for a reason. Your task in my life is to teach me how to be patient and how to love tenderly in silence from distance. 

Maybe you are my miracle, maybe just lost fate. Maybe nothing, maybe everything of that, who knows? I am ready to accept to be loved and to be hurt, but I am not ready not to try. 

I do not want you to change, or to grow up. I do not want you to sacrifice anything for me; all I want is you to remain being a person I got used to. The person whom I miss the scent of while sleeping alone in your bed, the warmth when you sit next to me but not holding my hand, the tenderness of calm voice when you text me. The person whom is still on the boarder of crossing from boyhood to manhood.  

So, I am embracing the chaos. I am accepting my inevitable fate, my darkness, my breakdowns, my vices and my fears, but I am trying to understand yours too. You grow up in different system of values. System, in which I will remain alien. This idea scares me more than a fact that I am older than you, more broken and more damaged in terms of life experience. 

I am grateful for unconditional love I received from you, but forgive me for doubting that humans are able for anything unconditional. I am meeting certain difficulties while I am trying to understand what and how I feel for you. All I know is that contemplation will not provide me an answer. The answer is in silence we share, in your unselfish care for me, in my deep tenderness for you, in need to be close to you physically without touching you, but wanting it subconsciously or consciously at the end. 

So, forgive me that I do not believe I am able to give you unconditional love. Seen through my eyes you are a beautiful man. And due to my human nature, I seek for beauty in order to fight against the senseless moments of routine. So, death learned me all important lessons about life and among them is: when the moment comes for you to leave this life, the only thing you are allowed to take with you are your memories. So, I am trying to collect beautiful moments with the beautiful people.  

Beauty can not be defined, but it can be measured by her depth; I feel you deeply.  

You are the only surreal thing from 2015 that I want to keep; you are my illusion.