HOMO
My knees are safe, so are my elbows,
ribwort doesn’t grow under the snow –
that’s what I deserve.
I will never tell you “it hurts”,
my dear mama.
Because you prefer to believe
that I have no feelings.
Only grapes of wrath
and hollow tears when something inside
me started to surge.
Mama, you know I had to grow up
even before I was born,
to believe that someone was waiting for me,
that it’s not easy, of course,
but possible to love children
first and not in response.
I was your punishment,
mama?..
I have always been “not like the others”.
What’s it about this time?
I don’t tell you about her:
for you I’m always alone.
I don’t ask you for help:
it is you who comes to me.
Mama, tell me, was I at fault for
those sleepless nights when till the dawn
the tears kept dropping?
For the shame and worry?
For every broken year?
It beats quietly, then it burns like hell.
It hurts for two, for the two of us
but we are laughing.
Mama, do you remember all those nights
when we couldn’t?
All those people
who’ve been gone since then?
But we’re here.
Even though it is so unsteady
and so unsafe but
who cares if you’re breathing
or you’re out of breath?
Mama, if only you knew how
I need you
the way you will never be.
Just like me…
And my insides are melting
so all that’s left is writing
and choking on tears.
Because I’m about to burst
and still need to live.
You know, mama, when we were children
and each of us was yours,
the ribwort on the wound taught us to love.
– Krystsina Banduryna
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I was born in a provincial Belarusian town, 62 miles northwest of Chernobyl. My mother worked as a nurse, and my father was an alcoholic. It’s a story of large number of families across Belarus. Around the world, too. I was supposed to replicate this way. I could become one of… Do a lousy job for a miserable salary, get married to someone only to get alienated later, have children whose lives would be ruined by the mere fact of them born into such circumstances.
But at the age of 19 I fell in love with a girl, and life turned a corner from there. I’m 27 now. I live in the capital city of Belarus, Minsk, I write poetry and through the texts I share with the others what I experienced. I also talk about the experience of being a lesbian in the society that refuses to see LGBT people. My collection HOMO (2019, Minsk) is about that, about being different among this sameness.
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