Wound Oil
an excerpt
“Don’t worry, I already have a husband,” you say to Dragan.
Pavle, in the driver’s seat, laughs with his whole body. Dragan, with his head in his hands, says nothing. Past the little brick cottage your father built with his father before your family left for Canada, down the dusty road, the Lada snakes towards the purple smokestacks of your mining town.
“I do worry. I worry your husband will beat me up,” Dragan says quietly.
Holding up the skin of your lower left jaw with one hand, your “never bomb Serbia” t-shirt ironically soaked in blood, you don’t say anything. Thank God it was you and not your girls. Under 130-pounds of animal. Screaming, fighting for your life. Then, confusion as someone handed you a towel, someone carried you to the car. The myriad competing voices inside your head - doubt, anxiety, fear, guilt - exploded as one silent howl deep inside your body. Kuku. Like a bolt of lightning, the feeling of heat cut across your face, a flame you could not run from.