Llegaron con grandes camiones
para instalarte el glaciar.

Fue un trabajo rápido y eficiente.
Sentiste aquel mar estático,
níveo y azul
desde el pecho
hasta la espalda,
y yo lo vi
reflejado en el fondo
de la negra luz de tu mirada.

Cierto día llegó una ola de calor
que empezó a deshacerlo
en súbitas cascadas.

Menos mal que tan solo fue una fuga
y que el servicio técnico no se hizo esperar.

La araña teje

una red

emponzoñándote la boca

-has envejecido y tu vida sigue recordando a

la nevera de un piso de estudiantes en agosto-

has llegado al barranco
donde se te cayó el lenguaje
y no queda ni siquiera el fantasma
de una sílaba.

Ahora que estás muda
se te ahorca el aire
y tu memoria arde

en la armonía inocente de un coro infantil

Autopsy

Autopsy

                                                                                                           Las palabras

                                                                                                           no hacen el amor

                                                                                                          hacen la ausencia.

                                                                                                           Alejandra Pizarnik                                                                                                            

                                                                                                                       

I expected stillness and cold where I find movement and warmth,

but this skin is not yours

and I freeze.

Back.

My hands and yours joined together, a knot that supported the universe.

Then.

Your dinner:

cold and untouched.

Holograms of your bones:

broken.        

Nausea.

Serum and O negative blood.

High-grade fever.

Cold compresses.

You couldn’t even wake up in the whole day.

Tears. The wheelchair. Hands sanitizer.

Tissues and meds.

Television filling up the silence.

Me, repeating the routinary walk to work at 6am,

crossing empty streets in the dark,

knowing that there will be no kiss

before arriving at the high school’s fence,

just the headphones

&

your absence

Taking more space,

                                                          -it’s getting late in this cannibalistic reality-

                                        more space,

                                                                         -meanings are rotten-

                                                                                     

                                                                                                          more space…

                                                                                                          .

                                                                                                          .

                                                                                                          .

                                                                                                          .

                                                                                until I drowned,

                                                       drowned in our songs,

                                 drowned like the gypsy girl

             in Federico Garcia Lorca’s  
 Romance sonámbulo.

                   Pero yo ya no soy yo, ni mi casa es ya mi casa

And there is just a case left,

it resembles a body,

my body?

                                   -a dried daffodil-

your body?

                                 -an apple eaten by worms-

We are just a blank page now,

a webpage that didn’t load.   

And words linger around it,

naked words, clumsy words, orphan words:

unable to touch, to bring your voice back,

to evoke your smell, to shelter me.

Those green walls again.

No.

Those lowered blinds.

No.

The nurses coming and going.

No.

A total lack of privacy.

No.

Your golden curls gone.

No.

Some weak, solitary hairs where your beard used to be.

No.

Small talk.

No.

Nothing more to say.

No.

Our empty house.

No.

Those plastic veins

keeping you away from me.

Rage.

Our future bed & breakfast in Lisbon

destroyed by the bulldozer of reality.

No.

We won’t take the train at midnight

or wait for its arrival on the benches

with our backpacks full of chocolate bars, chips and a few clothes,

our intertwining hands

our hands...

I don’t know what to do with my hands anymore,

they were designed to hold yours,

so useless now

hanging like wet socks on a balcony,

getting dry and losing their color.

No more sunsets at Alfama, in that magical viewpoint

-free of tourists, noises and souvenirs-

covered in the decadent melodies of fados,

where the gardens gave us peace

and the bridge looked like a red ribbon

in the river Tejo’s messy wet hair,

where we drank Sagres and looked at the rose sky,

that infinite playground for the swallows.

No more freshly baked pasteis de nata and coffee in the morning,

no more green wine and sardinhas at night.

All beauty gets blurry,

loses definition:

there is just a series of low quality photographs left,

endlessly swallowed by the monstrous passing of the time.

These are not your hands.

I am not myself.

I have been devoured,

ripped apart by sleepless nights,

my chest is an empty nutshell,

my eyes darkrooms

where the past,

our past

doesn’t develop,

it slips out.

"When I am not with you, I am without me"

Remember?

I made them write it on your funeral wreath.

You called me the poet of light,

you can't see how dark my verses are now.

Qué hacer cuando
la noche cae sobre ti
con la frialdad
de los azulejos azules
de una cocina a la que regresas
sin necesidad de soñar.

El cuerpo débil se agita,
atacado por puñales invisibles.
La pantalla no lo salva.
El reloj lo condena.

El olvido amordazado.
Las manos enterradas en el barro.

El viento aúlla
como un perro enfermo.
Sus cantos se cuelan
en las venas de una ciudad calcinada.

El cuerpo habla
replicando el diálogo sombrío
de las ramas desnudas en el bosque.
Sus palabras son
cinceles que esculpen
irregulares arrugas de ausencia.

Palpar a ciegas una piel que no se inmuta. .
Se me ahoga la propia tierra
se me deshace la propia lengua.

Morning...

Idioma  metálico y ajeno,
fonética del frío.

El calendario se precipita imparable
sobre estos besos sin aire.
Los recuerdos vuelan
bajo la ingravidez de un abrazo necesario y cálido
pero marchito,
escuálido,
efímero,
cubierto de días de infinita soledad y ceniza.

El poema
ese hábitat de tímidas palabras,
jungla inaccesible
(pues no se publica en ninguna red social)
que te protege cuando el sueño se posterga
envolviéndote en su bruma
para olvidar el desasosiego del mañana.

El tiempo, esa construcción social,
se desliza entre mis manos
cual canción dolorosa,
ajando esta piel
hipersensible a la belleza.


Mira, ahí están,
todas esas ácidas ilusiones estampadas
contra la ventana de la realidad.
Escuecen pero cierro los ojos
agradeciendo este intenso vivir
que me atraviesa.