By Bojana Stojcic
Because when Bowie died, I heard thunders whirring in the air like choppers, music turning into indistinct chatter over the radio, which left me oddly detached from it all and it’s then that I became a hard-swearing, full-blooded agnostic, or possibly an atheist, and god knows I tried to take part in the present, even contemplate the future, it’s just that it was easier to understand the past, because with time I began to develop fear of the unknown which turned into fearing to go out alone, then go back into the house, fall asleep, because when your bizarre little habits progress into a full-on dependency, you know you got a problem, like every time someone looks at me the way I don’t want to be looked at, I start to tidy the contents of my purse or run my fingers over the back cover of the book I pretend to be reading, dots jumping about on the page like grasshoppers, because there is nowhere to run, no one to run to, so you run into yourself, because at home I gnaw chicken bones like I would my own, trail my hand over the side of my son’s ship, thinking there’s gotta be a way to sail it safely through the narrow passage, and when it stops raining at last, the sun holds me naked on its knee like a baby while I breathe breathe breathe, because I know that after the rain, crocodiles yawn like mantraps.
Bojana Stojcic is a teacher and writer from Serbia, living in Germany with her boys and a bunch of friendly ghosts.
Photo by Bojana Stojcic.