vishmão

“I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.”

don’t turn away i did that once and lost a country  and then lost the language to name the loss i don’t have a name, just a lot of empty places on a map and everything that has happened to me has happened inside my own head i waited for someone to show up and tell  me i was forgiven  but i made myself impossible to find and then i made myself impossible and of course the war never ends for people like us. whatever was lost is gone for good this time. i know because they didn’t show up in even the good dreams. i’ve been so many people; forgive me. if i can’t look you in the eye  it’s because i’m scared you’ll see in me only what’s missing.  i know every border is made up of nothing but hands that take and take  until you’re not the same person you were on the other side and i know that land can be sick with amnesia until the only thing inherited is the forgetting. (i belong to that failing memory, and all the names i forget are mine.) (i belong to the words that escape me in both languages. )