rosary for my dead loves
a bead
already for many years I begin from this one,
I call him indian,
though his name was vytenis
I remember his surname too,
etched for a lifetime,
painfully, the moment my friend told me
she’d heard about him on the radio,
she said: isn’t that the same one,
your vytenis
like a tomcat
he stalked the roofs of all the churches in telšiai
until one day he fell,
and god didn’t grant him a tenth life
that’s the one, I replied, that’s the one,
and I wept on the country bus
a bead
this one’s right from childhood
first kiss in the foundations of a never completed
inter-war church
our home-made sweaters,
hands shaking with tension
and what kind of love was that?
we did what our friends were doing
so terribly timid,
and now he’s a lush
a bead
this one I don’t want to remember
nor encounter,
though sometime we pass one another by in the streets of vilnius
a bead
one more buried,
I’d like to know where
he was a good and peaceful Samogitian
so senselessly –
he went into the woods with his father
and never came back
the same
a festering eye, then the rest of him went too
a bead
my beloved,
my great gentle one,
my first experienced
kindness,
my great guilt
through you I descended into hells,
so that we would both be purified
a bead
I met this one by a lake
now he is raising a son,
back then he himself was still a child
for a good three years
we rolled around and did who knows what,
we played
though sometimes I think
he really did love me
a bead
I wrote my whole life on this one:
measured all others by him,
and they never had a chance
against a storybook prince
he was forbidden,
still is
sometimes I’m afraid I’ve cast a spell over him –
can a hungry three-year-old girl feed from another’s life?
a bead
a pilot –
so ordinary he was special
I wanted to marry him,
raise his children, build a house,
be a wife, a beloved,
a decrepit old woman with him
I didn’t dare
but he would’ve clarified me,
he was warm: with his poems, his birch-rods, his thoughts
even now I long for him – – –
a bead
beautiful as a roman god:
legs, chest, buttocks, hands,
marble, gilded columns and scutums,
tattooed – as though he was marled by moss
somehow we remained together,
playing games of infidelity,
and it was good
a bead
this one I helped to heal
when we met
he was covering his windows with blankets,
felt persecuted
it was a period of amphetamines;
I’d snort alongside him
cold in the nostril nerve in the head
the most carefully drawn pictures nights without souls
music movement everything beats oh
nostril raw we hold on
I fed him soup, cutlets,
sat through the night caressing his head,
we wept
he told no one
when he was better I fled
so that he wouldn’t begin thanking me
a bead
this one’s embedded deep
as a reindeer antler
between my breasts
one look was enough
to have us both confessing
our longing
from the first look to the last –
that’s all there was
our fates held between god’s fingers –
I know it’s inevitable
that we meet again
in another bodily form,
brother
a bead
how many nights I trembled alongside him
afraid to breathe
so I wouldn’t wake him
the way he moved, talked, sang –
everything sliced me in two,
pure hormonal desire,
no metaphysics here
attracting and repelling, magnetic and not a single kiss –
if we came close I’d run right away
and betray him with someone else –
all the more painfully, all the more painfully
I’d punish myself for that feeling,
believing
it would sort itself out
and now
meeting me
his wife grabs his hand –
as though I want to steal him
but I’m not hungry
a bead
scars have sunk into the spot
where the knife touched
his skin and where it touched mine –
we met too late,
we parted too early –
we break
a bead
oh! now this is a story:
I’d call her a snobbish,
a million letters between him and I,
clever citations, intricate words – how smart we are!
oh! how we’d write poems together,
what claims we placed on one another,
though all the while we both had other loves
who were jealous of us
it might be funny if it wasn’t so sad:
not once did we make love,
kittens
a bead
this one is now my girlfriend’s husband
and I’m happy he isn’t mine
a bead
what an August, so sultry in the heart
and there’s no place for me to hide from myself,
and then this one –I remove all safeties,
plummet to the nethermost depths, allow
degradation, deceit, contempt
descend into my abyss, devour myself to the point of nausea
,he does with me what he wants,
promises to marry me and impregnate me, says he wants a daughter,
says my breasts are made for nursing her,
then roars, says he’ll fuck me in the ass,
good God, and I’m not worth anything more,
afterwards he takes me to his grandparents’ place and we go mushrooming,
it’s so bright that it’s clear to see this isn’t real, and there is such sadness
in his grandmother’s eyes: my child, he brings a new one every week;
but I can’t leave this game,
until one day he disappears,
my sorrowful knight, and I don’t know how to survive,
I’m left without my self, left with nothing,
I don’t know if I’ll be able to start again – – –
restart –
I am breathing
I am breathing
I am breathing – – –
a child shot by his father,
prisoner of iraq
a bead
but this whole rosary is for you, the feelings I dared not
recognize, my shadow of guilt, the fist clogging my throat,
tuft of moss, when he’d linger underfoot at our classroom door,
when he’d look me in the eyes, ask how I was doing,
I tried so hard not to see because I was afraid everyone would laugh,
but they laughed anyways, because to laugh was so funny,
I didn’t understand how hungry we are for love, I didn’t understand
that life ends, that everything is fragile, I didn’t want to see because
it would have meant living responsibly, and it was terrifying, good God,
and then that day he came to my apartment door, good God,
in the cold, pressed the buttons, happy about something, asking to be let in,
and I said to them all – no no no no, no: it’s just some crazy acquaintance
from jurbarkas days, he can bugger off, and when he’d write
his poems, when he’d bring them to me to read, as though
he really was my shadow, and when he wrote
that lovely and kind article in the school newspaper
about me, no, good God, please not that, please not that—and everyone laughs at him,
it’s like he doesn’t exist, a shadow, he doesn’t let himself be photographed ever,
I don’t know what remained for his parents, if they themselves still remain,
after that, after he hung himself in the dorm, I don’t know if anything remains,
I don’t even know if anyone remembers him, or remembers,
but I do, I truly do
a knot
1997–2015
Translated by Medeinė Tribinevičius
ABOUT
Vitalija Pilipauskaitė-Butkienė (b. 1981) is a poet, literary scholar, doula, and mother of three children.
She completed Master’s degree in Lithuanian literature at Vilnius University and is currently a doctoral student there. Her debut book, I Am Breathing, was named one of the 12 most creative books of 2015 by the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore. In the same year she was awarded the Z. Gėlė Prize for best poetic debut.
Her work embodies the perspective of a free 21st century woman, examining ideas of identity, relationships, and societal roles. In addition, the poems put forth insights about the Soviet and post-Soviet space of the late 20th century, as often as expressed through the voice of a child. Her poetry is notable for bringing to the fore themes and topics often considered too intimate, indelicate, or best kept secret; these include breast cancer, the emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of children, and the self-destruction of the individual.