Poetry by Marta Špoljar

                        ​ Matt Anderson CC



The world ends

and then class starts.
The word ends and the girls in the row behind you
keep laughing at what their friend sent them on WhatsApp.
Their friend is not here because she goes to another school,
their friend is not here because she's sick at home.
Their friend is sick and/or elsewhere but the world did not end.
The world ended for you but the class still started.

The world ends and then you get up off the sidewalk
and you walk home and the world continues ending
and the boys you walk past laugh, and they are drunk
and they will be hungover tomorrow but the world will not have ended.
You wash your hair in the sink and cry into a pillow
and the world has already started, and it will end again.

The world ends and your chest caves in.
It hurts like your chest is actually caving in, but it's just the world ending
and the song your parents like plays on your friend’s flat screen
and the mess you made is still in the kitchen.
The world ended but you will have to clean it up
and you walk home and sleep but the world already started.

The world ends a million times a second,
the world ends in such mundane ways
because it has to end before it can start over.
You have too many firsts to hang up on the lasts.
The world will end so many times before you turn 20

this is not the last time you will miss that it has happened.




​
Life finds a way

When I was six, the fall felt endless.
I think I maybe fell too much.
For a while, it all felt senseless
and I guess made sense as such.
I grew up and cried about it,
tried to lose all that you touched,
then I tried to write about it
edit it down from ‘too much’.

I went back to the place today.
Turns out it is only ground.
The paths we walked are overgrown,
the trees we knew were all cut down.

I stood the ground I never used to;
(easier now that I'm not six)
Turns out the world did not stop turning;
I counted circles in the trees.

​

Marta Špoljar is a full-time student and a part-time translator from Zagreb, Croatia. The thoughts she fails to put into poetry, she tweets from @shhhhhpoljar.

---