I carry a nut in my mouth.
M6. Chrome-plated. Bent.
I swallowed it with water
1993, in Berane.
It wasn't in the water.
It was in the palm.
The palm was mine.
I didn't want to spit it out.
I wanted to know
what it's like to have something
no one can take from you
because it's inside.
The nut rusted in 1997.
I tasted iron.
I didn't think anything.
I just knew:
it's still there.
2003. It stopped grating.
Quieted down.
As if it had always been part of my skeleton.
2004. X-ray.
The technician says: You have something in your throat.
I say: I know.
He asks: What is it?
I say: A nut.
He asks: How did you swallow it?
I say: It wasn't an accident.
He didn't ask further.
People in Berane don't ask further.
2021. I tried to force it out.
Coughing. Convulsions. Vomiting.
It wouldn't go.
It's mine now.
I am its.
Sometimes, at night,
when I'm alone and no one sees me,
I bring my palm to my mouth
and whisper:
Nut.
Are you still there?
Nothing answers.
But I know it is.
I feel it.
Under my tongue.
Like a memory.
The other day,
in the city,
I saw a box of nuts.
Same kind. M6. Chrome-plated.
They stood on the shelf,
shiny,
clean,
not one of them bent.
I thought:
these haven't lived.
No one swallowed them.
No one forgot them inside themselves.
Mine is ugly.
Mine is bent.
Mine tastes of blood
and apple juice
and fear
and water that wasn't clean.
Mine doesn't belong in a box.
Mine belongs to me.
I belong to it.
When I die,
they'll take it out during the autopsy.
Place it on a metal table.
Look at it.
Write a report:
foreign object, metallic, unknown origin.
And I'll be lying beside,
opened,
and I won't mind.
Because she will be outside.
For the first time.
And she will see what light looks like.
And maybe someone,
some other boy in Berane,
will put another nut in his mouth.
And swallow it.
And forget why.
But he won't forget.
You never forget.
It's not the nut.
You are the nut.
M6. Chrome-plated. Bent.
And you still
haven't passed.