Budimira.
I do not know your name…
… but I will call you Budimira…
an old Croatian name..
You came home one day ..and put the kettle on.
The kettle boiled…you made a cup tea and turned
the TV on…
And there you sat….in your brown leather chair
And passed away…so silently it seems…
in 1966… cold dead you sat…. for over 40 years…
The tea still in the cup placed by your side
And no one seemed to care that you might die alone
within those modest walls that was your home..
A troubled singular…reclusive soul…
They thought you’d gone away…
But you were a cold corpse …seized by a mystery fate.…
And there was no one there to shed
those salted tears that come when grieving death.
Clothes ragged strips of lace..your skin a leathery thing
Like some Egyptian Queen entombed
In your Croatian mausoleum.
Four fingers and a thumb..the bones protrude
as evidence of passing time…
How did it come about ..your strange demise ?
What were you feeling at the time death
as your pulse stilled within that solitary heart
and you breathed out your final breath ?
Kristine Byrne 31st Dec. 2013…
Ruminations based on a story of a woman found after 40 years in Zagreb in 2008.