May those who lack the courage to remain silent transcend in their own way.
May we find the way to share what is necessary.
May my best poems be lost among lost pages.
I want to discover new paths.
I want to find new mysteries.
May nothing be revealed
in anything.
May every movement of yours be yours.
Let’s discover notes, silences.
Let’s break all forms, all matter, all materials. The drawings from our elementary school years.
Let’s begin with the ABC of Opening our Emotions.
SHOW YOURSELF, damn it!
Just like that, without fear.
Imagine a tazo, the kind that came in Doritos bags.
That illusion, the short span of recess.
But you found what you had always wanted.
The golden tazo.
You knew happiness at eleven.
Everything else has been learning to settle.
And you’ve done it very well.
Look at you now.
When you say you are happy
with the calm of turning off the TV before
sleeping and knowing
that no tornado (like me)
will invade your ground.
Your income.
Comfort for many,
remedy for so many
fools who believe in you
because they don’t know you deceive them.
You lie while showing that our minds and miseries die mysteriously while no one shows
ningún tipo de interés más por menester que por motriz agravio no conceden moribunda muestra de morosa muerte, y misericordiosa mentira.
Monstrous morning that at dawn grants us the miracle of mystery.
Be each one of the crickets that won’t let me sleep.
Wake me.
Alternately, someday I will wake you
only
so
you can hate me
justly.
Because I know you will hate me
because you love me.
It’s a guarantee.
We will move statues.
Mountains.
We will colonize
decolonization.
All of academia, with its slow dawns, will be the playgrounds of the children we will never have.
We will weave together
not a past.
Nor a huipil.
Nor a tie.
We will weave presents as green as this one.
As aquatic.
Because it only takes stepping slightly away from the surface,
to smell
open spaces
And yes,
it’s true that all your insinuations are enough for me,
I have never asked for more.
Leaves rise and sound slowly without asking permission, but your intentions—yes.
Learn not to ask permission.
Every rhythm has to
break.
Or it isn’t rhythm.
If you believe in something, it’s because it isn’t.
It’s not about discovering
paper airplanes.
Or little handprints.
Small on the glass.
(We already said the children we love belong to others. The future is not ours.)
It’s about knowing that a broken toy is better than no toy.
What do you feel when no one invites you?
All dance is mathematics in its purest state.
Dance is poetry.
Dance is prosaic homage.
Dance is elegy.
And elegies dance without the drums that are the only beloved dance.
But you don’t want to listen to us, and that’s why you don’t do it—because you’ve always done it.
Because you don’t need to hear the GPS voice telling you to turn left.
Because your whole body is to the left.
But your fears invade you on the right.
And today, only today, there is a bubbling of deep and silent water.
Today there are painted stones.
Absolute rule of what is established.
No means no.
Even if you want to replicate that
which keeps you alert
in the nights
without meaning.
No means no.
Because clarity
opens space
to poetry.
Every forest that burns
is just another forest.
And every silenced song
is a minimal silence.
No one knows what they don’t know.
But fear is afraid of itself.
And the beach shines, shines,
slow,
soft,
without your company.
Photography by Jerónimo Andrade
Mexican author of literary fiction and non-fiction, facilitator of Creative Writing Workshops in Mexico, the United States, Kenya, and Cuba.