If it is ok, I’d go to sleep now… With all due respect, fears of mine, honourable ghosts from the past, unfinished stories, uncertainty and pain, do not take me wrong, but I’d rather have some alone time. To be quiet. You are too loud for me. Especially you – other people’s expectations… You all speak at the same time, slam the doors in my head, you disturb the lullaby of mine that would sing itself to the ear of my serenity. You pry into my self-absorption and unawareness.
Why do you protest immediately, we’ll be seeing each other in the morning. As usual, you will make me get up on the wrong foot. We’ll drink the first coffee without sugar together and then you’ll let me start the day with my face unwashed. Every ounce of my silence will be filled with your noise, soundless and without notes. Without lyrics or rhythm.
Please, have some mercy. Don’t you see that even my pyjamas fell asleep long ago? Don’t you see snoring has been left in the waiting room for too long? It has been waiting to get into my bed and start its music, and you won’t let it. Go to other kids, as unprepared and as clumsy as myself. Am I the only one you have a hold on? Look how many more stupid people are out there. Go to them. Make their skin itchy. Make their eyes cry. Bite their smiles. Why do you find me so interesting? Is it because of my defiance? Is it because of my stubbornness and resistance?
Your confidence is torn apart by my lack of belief in you even though I address you. It hurts you to know that you scare me only for a minute, that the pain you inflict lasts only for a day… It gets on your nerves that you’re in hot pursuit of me but always fail to capture me? I am constantly within your sight but always out of your reach? Well, I’ll always be.
I will be running away from you as long as my feet can fly. As long as I have tempera paints in my head. As long as my smiles have a voice to sing to the deaf. I defend myself from you by making love with sincerity. This is why you cannot harm me. And when I’ve had enough of your bullshit, even then I won’t surrender to you. I will give my white flag to death, and you will burst from light, warmth and purity… You, stranglers of my youth, touting my confidence, foreign mercenaries smuggling illicit pain over the border of decency into my room. It is neither the first nor the last time that my insomnia and myself are going to stay awake until dawn staring at the ceiling… But at least I told you everything I wanted to. Oh yeah, and another thing. Fuck you.
Translated from the Serbian by Svetlana Milivojević-Petrović
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Ovaj post je dostupan i na: Serbian
