My Dear Love,

This is your Mum writing.

There are no words, no thoughts, or signs
that can express the depth of this sorrow.

Sorrow for you, my child.

I never knew of love such as this until you
were born to me.

My beloved daughter.

I navigated life by you.
Sun would always rise from wherever you were.
Days were numbered by how many until
your next text, call, visit, hug.

We had a code word for when in danger.
Have you forgotten it? It was Hrvatska. Not Croatia. Hrvatska.

My map of the world was not made of
places, rivers, seas or mountains.
It was You. Always You.
Which is why I believed that the place did not matter.
Only that we are together.

I now think I was wrong.
You would have been safer in Hrvatska. In Zagreb.
Growing up as a Hrvatska cura (girl).
You had the heart of one. Full and Pure. 

I am sorry. For that and all else.                                                                 
For letting you go into a world that would not hold you.
For not teaching you how to know a friend from foe.
For not saving you from those whose sugary words disguise betrayal.
Those you asked for help, but none was given.

It was a Life—yours and mine.
There is only a hollow now.
Deep hollow where embers burn long into
the night.
Every night.

It is how I know that love never dies.
Not the one like ours. Two of us alone. In this valley of tears.
“Tell me where it hurts, mum,” you ask.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Some mothers can’t stop hurting.
Can’t stop howling.
Ever.

---

I wrote this poem a couple of months after my daughter died. The first handful of words the pain shaped.

‘This is how I would die into the love I have for you: As pieces of cloud dissolve in sunlight.’

(Rumi)