Katarina Pavičić-Ivelja primarily writes poetry “za svoju dušu”/”for her soul”, as the Balkans say. Her writing journey started at the feminist news site Libela but she has since discovered that she can best express herself through poetry. This year, she was featured in the “World Poetry Day Collection” of the National Museum Zadar, Croatia. Currently, she teaches Children’s Literature at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia.

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My grandmother’s village is made out of the sky

And the infinite shades of blue, quilted together by the steady
hands of her mother and all the mothers of all the mothers
before her.

And when they put their quilting needles down to rest,
they soar high above the rooftops, leaving brush strokes
the texture of their hair all over their unreachable canvas.

And they laugh with the green-faced violinist’s purple frock
as they dance to the music of forgotten lifetimes that seep
through the unraveling stitches in the lining of the ether.

And they grow and grow and grow until they rip through
the seams, until the world becomes a marble at their feet,
until they come face to face with Chagall’s brush and take it.

And paint a field of wildflowers over their graves
so I may never find them.

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I would be mold

If I could be anything in the world, I would be mold
that grows on the ceiling of my old apartment.
Never invisible, sometimes intimidating
and always just out of arms reach,
engraving intricate designs
into its drywall canvas.
Uncontainable.
Constant.
Free.

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Sometimes

We used to sit in cafés sipping on macchiatos
for hours, having endless conversations
about Star Trek and other important things.

We’d talk about college exams
and what the world had in store
for the doodles of our future selves that we drew
on the margins of pretentiously overpriced textbooks.

Sometimes we were space travellers,
sometimes her uniform was yellow and mine blue,
sometimes we discovered new galaxies,
and sometimes we kissed.

Funny to think that space travel and kisses
seemed equally science-fiction.

 

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