For Elisa Naranjo
Every time I bite your lip, your fingers
ask my neck the same thing:
is it hungry or does it love me?
and I am always malnourished
because you ask for seas
unleashed in cities:
buildings screaming in the flesh;
and I only hollow out a modern river in my veins:
without water, without children, without washbasins;
with trash sleeping among the dead
and flies in search of their blood and alcohol.
I, the one of the river I do not carry, endure:
I can only give you, I can only offer you
the calm imposed on the starving,
the barren lands of the skin.
But your fingertips do not listen,
they auscultate
the ungraspable: the heart.
It is not in the chest!
Ah, everything about you wears a gown.
You look for rage in my bronchi
or panic in my myocardium,
and my throat speaks a scream
in lowercase: I love you;
it does not fill me, you say,
it covers,
it does not shelter, you shout,
it covers,
that’s it, cover what hides, what conceals, what lie.
“Sir, I’m sorry,
there’s nothing to be done, I'm afraid,
you are a healthy man
and here we only pamper the sick.”
Photography by Ana Valentina Palacio.
I was born in summer, and that is why my mouth sometimes feels like a downpour . I study Journalism at UNAM, and in September 2024 I started the blog Palomas de Cassiopeia, a space for literary essay, autofiction, and poetry.