Andrea Damic
Another Version of Her
Somewhere out there lives another version of her—a version that never dreamt nightmares of a bombarded city, never had her innocence plucked out, her childhood cut short, its door firmly latched not to re-open again—a version that never boarded the last convoy leaving the only home she’d ever known before the war re-wrote pages of her history.
Somewhere out there lives another version of her—a version that still plays with Barbie, watches MTV and dreams about the ballroom dancing. She can’t wait for the first snowflakes to touch the ground, always in awe at their flickering under the city lights. She knows nothing of losses as she lives next door to her best friend instead of another continent.
Somewhere out there is another her who doesn’t ask Father about us and them—them being the Oppressor—and he doesn’t respond that there are only people and their actions because he raised her to look beyond peoples’ political and religious beliefs, their nationality and the colour of their skin, to look at who they are at their core.
Somewhere out there is another her and that her never becomes Refugee, Displaced, Nameless. And never feels Unwanted. She doesn’t wave at the fading silhouettes left behind, one of them being her father. She never gets to know the mindless desperation besieging the last day of her nonage, and she never gasps for air while being crushed by the overflowing anguish of human bodies trying to secure a seat to Unknown.
Somewhere out there she doesn’t have to cope with losses no child should ever experience, let alone comprehend at the age of twelve. She is not lost to the city she was birthed into, the same one that won’t recognise her in the decades to come. That her belongs. She isn’t fragmented and her shell needn't mending like the broken pottery pieces in the art of Kintsugi.
Somewhere out there she doesn’t educate her child on the meaning of refugee from the first-person perspective. She doesn’t shy away from sadness whenever they speak about Grandfather, the one person her daughter never got to know. That her still makes frost-bitten angels no matter the snowdrift and the world she inhabits isn’t shattered because she is still naive about that world.
Somewhere out there lives another her and her future is yet to unfold.
~
It seems as if the ages passed before she stopped envying that version of herself, and though she’s thankful, she can’t help but wonder about all the ifs—about the Before Time—the moments when her memories don’t tremble like the golden beams of sunlight airborne to the furthest corners of her soul, smouldering in wait, where they don’t make the rustling sound of stories never fully written, lingering softly, the bygone spells of a childhood torn asunder, where her life is a glass half-full, an unfinished canvas, an unsung note.
In time, she has grown to accept the heritable change of being and the prospect that Endings don’t adhere to the state of non-existence, and by doing that, she has allowed herself to embrace this alternate self.
Andrea Damic, born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, lives and works in Sydney, Australia. She wears many hats as her daughter likes to remind her. Aside from being a mum, Andrea is also an artist and a writer. Her education is opposite to artistic expression—she's an accountant with a master's in Economics. Being a non-native English speaker makes every publication worth the struggle. She believes there's something cathartic about seeing your words and art out in the world. Andrea is also a contributing editor of a newly founded Pictura Journal. Her literary art appears or is forthcoming in Bending Genres, JMWW, Ghost Parachute, The Ekphrastic Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Alien Buddha Press, Your Impossible Voice, and elsewhere. You can also find her fiddling with her website: https://damicandrea.wordpress.com/
