Pedestrian Bridge Over the Train Tracks in Brčko, Bih by Milica Mijatovic

PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE OVER THE TRAIN TRACKS IN BRČKO, BIH

 —By Milica Mijatović

I don’t know when the bridge was built,
or when the trains stopped running, or which side of the tracks was ours 
& which theirs, 
or why they painted the bridge 
turquoise, or why war is obsessed 
with lines, 
or who graffitied one of the bridge railings
with “Teška vremena, prijatelju,” 
or why some cement steps are missing, 
or how. But I know the tracks are a line, 
the war a blur, the bridge a truth. 
I know the way home is quickest 
across the tracks. I know as kids we never went that way alone. But one day the bridge became our meeting place, 
our common ground, and we’d sit, 
you with your name & me with mine. 
I’d say
This place makes me forget to be someone, and you’d look at me bewildered—
All this place does
is make me be someone. We were both stuck adhering to lines drawn on our knuckles, clenching our fists 
at the imaginary rumbling 
of some train coming to prove us 
wrong. 
 
—from Rattle #76, Summer 2022
By Milica Mijatović

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*Another poem I’d enjoyed: Like the Japanese Cherry Blossoms Wedded to the Soils Palm by Luther Hughes