With a long track record of writing poetry, Vesna values and enjoys her ability to deliver her poems in both English and Serbian. Feeling a great sense of cultural integrity and social resourcefulness, and being a community activist by nature, in addition to writing poetry and running her mediation business, Vesna engages in a variety of voluntary activities and programs. Since April 2019, Vesna has been producing a 2XX 98.3FM Radio program called “Serbia in My Heart” and, since September 2020, a program called “Mediation Today”.
Image: © Dušica Milutinović, 2017
Travelling back to my homeland always brings me joy and unique experiences. This story is my literary interpretation of a life-story, in a nutshell, shared with me, unprompted, by a woman I sat next to on a park bench during my European summer of 2023.
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What can I tell you, and I know you didn’t even ask me, but here we are… I haven’t always lived here. Forty years in Switzerland. Switzerland was good for me. Very good. It was hard work, but it was also satisfying as I was building up my life. At least I know why I worked. I was alone, with my son, working, being exhausted, but I created a life for us! And I earned my pension. I now have what I need. And what much do I need at the age of eighty?
Here I sit and watch these kids running around. Believe me, this is my only pure happiness: to see them so young, innocent and mischievous, happy, playing… there is no greater joy for me than that. When they grow up, all that changes…
And I was still half-child half-adult when he started chasing me. I was young, what was I, sixteen, just beginning to live. And he follows me, looks at me and says “Either mine or nobody’s.” And I’m a young girl, what do I know about life? He would mingle around me, watch me. He was a budding local politician, but that doesn’t matter, he was what he was… ten years older than me.
And once he ambushed me when I was walking alone… Ooh! He didn’t even ask… I always think about it, clearly remember that. He grabbed me, lifted my skirt, and what was I going to do? He was bigger and stronger than me… ”Either mine or nobody’s…”
I gave birth to my son after that. My father didn’t want me back in the house, such were the times… His family also didn’t want me, nor did they love me. Nor my child.
So I picked myself up, took my child with me and went to Switzerland. Alone under the sky. And he didn’t look for me, nor did he ever want to see or have his son. Whatever… I fought. I built our life. My son stayed there… and I came back to my birthplace. To close my life circle here. I was born here.
May I die here too.
© Vesna Cvjetićanin, 2023
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