After the loss of a baby, there remains silence, an empty womb, shame, and grief for what could have been but never will. Society expects you to recover, to forget, to move on, to try again, while the burden of guilt is carried in silence. This poem is an attempt to describe the indescribable, the experience of losing something you never truly had, the loss of a dream, a dream of happiness.
The project is part of the subtheme The Poetics of Care – Intimacy, Tenderness, Repair.
Author
Aleksandra Jovičić Đinović
Aleksandra Jovičić Đinović writes poetry, short stories, and essays, with work published in domestic, regional, and international journals. She received the Mak Dizdar Award for Best Unpublished Poetry Collection (2017), after which her first book, Wanderings, was published in 2018 at the Slovo Gorčina festival. Her second poetry collection, Our Little Deaths, appeared in 2020, and her third, Thirties Are Not What We Imagined, won the Milutin Bojić Award in 2021. Her fourth poetry collection, Until I Become Bone, includes the poem she is submitting.
