WRITING WA | INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2025
1 min
Starling murmuration by Sofija Stevanovic
Writing WA
I met Anya at a funeral.
I was 16, it was late spring and entirely too hot for the occasion. I stood on dead grass and cracked marble, staring at the gaping black hole where my father's body was about to rot forever.
I remember the stink of frankincense and flower wreaths; the sound of thurible chains and orthodox prayers; my bare feet sliding down the leather insoles of my heels and the squeeze of my mother's bony fingers, followed by a quiet tsk, every time I moved.
I kept trying to forget my father's last words.
Kept swallowing bile every time I couldn't.
‘Udaj se dobro i slušaj muža, on će znati najbolje.'
Marry well, and listen to your husband, he will know best.
He will know best like my father knew, and his father before that. It was the indisputable law of my world. God, Father, Husband—the holy trinity for a woman.
For me.
Take me, I plead to a god I didn't believe in. Anywhere but here.
God didn't answer. She did.
A ghost wearing human skin.
A hummingbird, pretending to be a person.
That she could appear so vibrantly alive in the middle of dissolution should've been my warning.
My ruin.
My Anya.
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