My Father, Before I Was Born
Sara Milić
had blood, slick and warm, pooling
onto already soggy pants, drenched
in trench mud. He screamed
His wife, his wife — and his little girl.
They won’t see him like this; maroon
smeared across his face, eyes wide
and dislodged from the heart --
but my father knows it still
The ghost of fresh blood, metallic
on his tongue, the shaking hands
over a bullet hole between brows;
damned film stuck on the same scene
of a sniper’s good training executed.
He never told me this story, just that
he can’t stand the smell of rotting blood
and the sight of an aimed rifle.
onto already soggy pants, drenched
in trench mud. He screamed
His wife, his wife — and his little girl.
They won’t see him like this; maroon
smeared across his face, eyes wide
and dislodged from the heart --
but my father knows it still
The ghost of fresh blood, metallic
on his tongue, the shaking hands
over a bullet hole between brows;
damned film stuck on the same scene
of a sniper’s good training executed.
He never told me this story, just that
he can’t stand the smell of rotting blood
and the sight of an aimed rifle.
Sara Milić is a Bosnian-American international student at Lancaster University where she is finishing her MA in Creative Writing. Sara’s experiences as a former war refugee and immigrant greatly influence her work in prose and poetry, through which she aims to shed light on the marginalized Balkan diaspora.
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