Sretno novo leto.

Hvala, također.

 

We sit at our table of three

After mass in our language

(held in the real church’s basement)

Asking to be Skyped in for a real family dinner.

 

De pošalji mi slike od mačkare molin te.

Send me pictures of the festival I’ll never see

With people I will never know again

Not since “cool cousin from America”

Became “cousin come to annoy us from America.”

Or worse

People who’ve forgotten me.

 

Sretan Vazan!

Također.

Only two days in the year, you text first

If it happens otherwise, it’s a bigger miracle

Than Jesus’ rising.

 

Sretan rođendan.

Hvala.

Zašto ti meni nikad ne čestitaš [deleted]

The dawning realization that I am a footnote in your life

A fifty-dollar bill stuffed in an envelope once a year

While you’re no longer a person in mine,

But a symbol, of a childhood perhaps idealized

A symbol of what we left behind.

 

Kad ćeš prit.

 

Sent when I’m surrounded by stacks of books

Filling out job applications on my laptop

My summers are not mine anymore.

 

Brzo.

I type.

 

Ne znam.

More truthfully.

 

Falite mi.

I delete that, no real emotion here.

 

Sretan Božić i Novo Leto.

You give me snippets of your life in Viber notifications

While I crane my neck over the Atlantic to see the rest

A ghost in your life, a ghost in my own

Forever wanting what I don’t have

Wanting people and when I find them finding

We no longer fit together

Like pieces from puzzles continents apart.

In another world we would have been like brothers

Or perhaps even further apart.

Ours is a relationship killed and kept alive

By Viber notifications.