REDEMPTION

When this love pulsed
in my eardrum, I closed my
fists, pretending not to hear it.
I was wearing my dark chainmail:
the steel of my days.

I remember I built walls fast around my soul,
sharpened swords, lit bonfires
I rememeber I put on my best helmet.
I was myself alone.

I looked at him behind the
towers, preparing catapults,
strategies, apologies.
I squinted at him
from the distant hills:
immesurable voids in my warlike soul.

For a moment I dreamed.
The invasion was calm and
Easy.
I surrendered without reason,
unintentionally.

When I turned to
the south, there you were.
I accepted your treaties,
your divisions, your orders,
your conclusions.
The north wind said nothing:
I stopped fighting againt me and
against poetry.

I became a slave, a servant and lover.
I was another star in your arrogant sky.
When you stole everything I allowed,
you left to conquer another
silent land.

My castle was burned,
my dragon was cursed,
my gardens were trampled.
Little remains of those days
in your veins My Beloved.

I Look at my ruins
and I do not know how to pray and
beg for redemption.
There is no salvation:
what kind of love is this that knows
no peace?

Love opened my numb body.
However, by irony of fate it
was already dead when it embraced me.

Now I wander blindly: eyes seared
by passion.
And I can't feel my skin nor
this hoarse betrayal.
And I do not feel anything nor ask
whose fault it was.

Now I walk barefoot through
fierce paths ,keeping the thorns
of my black roses, grinding the pallid petals
of yesterday, pledging my frightened soul
as the wind blows my memories.





Karla Bardanza