#courtyard
All the adults were smoking.
This is how I remember the Balkans.
Plastic chairs.
Apricots.
Somebody's uncle repairing something unnecessary.
Children running between parked cars
like tiny emotionally unstable diplomats.
The television inside talked constantly about danger.
Meanwhile outside:
watermelon,
heat,
neighbors yelling affectionately from balconies.
Nobody explained anything directly.
You learned history through atmosphere.
You learned fear
through lowered voices in kitchens.
You learned love
because everybody fed you constantly.
A woman from the third floor
once slapped my face lightly
for swearing
then gave me cake immediately after.
Regional parenting.
At night
my mother watered plants in silence.
Music drifted from somewhere distant.
Laughter too.
I think adults believed
if they kept talking loudly enough
the world would not collapse.
Honestly?
Reasonable strategy.
One evening, I asked my father:
"Are we going to die?"
He looked at me for a long time.
Then he lit another cigarette
and said:
"Finish your apricots."
I never asked again.
The apricots were good.
The war ended.
Somehow, both things are connected.
I think about that courtyard now
when I can't sleep.
Not the war.
Not the fear.
Just the apricots.
The plastic chairs.
The way my mother watered plants
like she was putting small bandages
on the whole country.
I am still that child, sometimes.
Running between parked cars.
Waiting for someone
to explain everything
with a piece of cake.
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 8:05 AM UTC
In the courtyard
Bare and unkempt
Is where you found me
Lost and without definition
Lighting my cigarette
Staring into my eyes
Taking this chance
I catch a glimpse
of your soul
through the bitter cold
Warming my hands
Individually
In the pockets
of my torn jacket
Fiercely unprepared
for what was to come...
Sep 9, 2018
Sep 9, 2018 at 7:09 AM UTC
The world passes by as I look across the courtyard, I stop to see the dry world passing by.
Kids riding their hoverboards, men and women making their way to their destinations,
all this with man-made machines shrieking the brakes to halt;
Funny are these DNA-embedded beings contending over who is richest, strongest and most influential.
This is where I am.
Wrapped up in your arms, fingers running everywhere;
The moist soft touches, blowing kisses in the air,
The warmth of your body that sets fire to even the cold October winds,
This is where I want to be.
The quilt that kept me warm has gone frosty,
The hair that ran like silk has gotten old,
The gentle squeeze on my hip stays forgotten.
Ripples of pleasure turned to pain, as I look back, that’s all I gained.
Looking at the dry world pass by; This is where I am, This is where I want you to be.
Apr 26, 2017
Apr 26, 2017 at 3:45 PM UTC
On the paint chipped pavement we went over the rules:
NO cherry bombs, NO bobbling,
NO lower-ballers, spin-tops,
chalk walkers, twenty fingers,
and especially NO skyscrapers.
So for a few minutes we played as raw as apple skin knees,
it was the roughest, toughest, hard-nosed game
of four square any fourth grader has ever seen.
But it was all over when someone crossed the line.
There was fussing, cussing, and an accusation of the mustnt’s.
Eyebrows adjacent, we argued and clawed like kilkenny cats,
we were breaking rules, we crossed the chalk.
We took sides and worst of all,
the one crucial act that we regret,
we slammed the ball down.
It towered overhead like window washers
and landed on the school’s roof.
We stopped arguing. Nobody won that day.
© Matthew Harlovic
Oct 28, 2014
Oct 28, 2014 at 9:29 PM UTC