I dreamt of us talking, Katarina.
Mostly you were speaking, and I was listening.
I dreamt of telling you autumn was here
golden and devastating.
Autumn brought its truth, and it was not
gentle when it said
children no longer needed me.
You smiled and shrugged your shoulders.
We must reinvent life, you said
and it must be done before spring.
The mind must be unshackled and opened
to entirely different ideas.
At the same time, awaken traces of a distant life.
Do you remember how your body slept on stone
and ate only food from cans,
do you remember the fragmented dreams
and the drunken smiles of poetry.
There was no weighing of words, no thought
of the heart’s position
in the coming shipwreck,
for the heart is there to ride the wild bull of love
and love is there to never slow down.
The rules are, like tattoos, inscribed on young skin
and once you are marked, there is no exit,
no retreat, no forethought.
All that is clear to me – I interrupt you –
But something else torments me –
the victim of the twentieth century, Katarina
has become the most terrible criminal of the next millennium.
How to explain that to children, and sleep in peace again?
You left, leaving a handful of questions, before
so much became unbearable
for us who remained.
I dreamt I lost you
among people.
It lasted one sequence too long
and it was suffocating.
Awakening brought me relief, Katarina,
and the answer was – just as the song says –
blown by the wind.

Mehmed Begić