Three Poems by Szilvia Szita

Family nest

“Why do you go to see Dad every day?”

The mother tears fresh bread
into bite-sized pieces.
The children turn their faces toward her,
like baby birds waiting for crumbs.

“Dad has tubes
where his voice used to be—
you can’t even talk with him.”

She offers explanations,
but the two children
find all of them unacceptable.

They wait for this episode to end,
for their father to come home,
for everything
to go back to the way it was—
because parents don’t change
the way children do.

They have never
seen up close,
how an adult flails,
beats their wings,
tries to fly.

*

Reiki

Outside, a playground.
Through the poorly sealed door,
the sounds of the stairwell—
footsteps, a ringing phone,
children’s voices.

Inside, calm, soothing music,
closer to silence than to sound.

A cool weight
pressed to my forehead—
lapis lazuli.

My favourite stone, I say.
She smiles.

How did she know?
How can one person know
what another truly loves,
and act accordingly?

I feel her palms
cradling my head,
then passing over arms, torso, legs,
as if moving up and down the stairs.

There is a place in the body, she says,
where nostalgia and solitude meet—
Clearly, that spot must be healed.

She finds it,
covers it with her hands,
but the coldness does not go away.
My past is made of ice.

Must I feel this? Do I have no choice?
Choice is seldom required, she replies,
and places the blue stone
next to the others,
on her wooden table.

*

Internship

I tell you,
people aren’t well,
my nephew says,
after working at a pharmacy.

You wouldn’t believe
how many sedatives,
how many antidepressants
we give out each day.

I don’t tell him
that I take them too.
Sometimes more, sometimes less.
Right now, rather more.

I let him believe
that our family is different:
our bonds are strong,
and those prescriptions
belong to strangers.

One day he will understand:
what is missing inside
cannot be given by others.

He has already changed the subject.
No need to discuss in detail
what does not concern us.

* 

Szilvia Szita is a poet from Hungary. She has published 2 poetry books in Hungarian and is working on the third one right now. Numerous poems have appeared in several Hungarian literary journals such as Alföld, Új Forrás, Jelenkor, Bárka, Parnasszus and Látó. She is very interested in interpersonal relationships, especially in times of hardships (illness, addiction, the situation of refugees). She currently lives in Strasbourg where she works with refugees and teaches languages and creative writing at the University of Strasbourg.