Resurrect me

Today I wrote I missed you for the first time

since your death in February

I reread all those poems you wrote me.

It was not easy to expose myself to myself

and declare I can’t hide our past behind the metaphors

you wove effortlessly out of my nothingness and dismay.

You tamed the words like no one ever could

and insisted on loving me as if I was blind enough

to believe a poet could love without bending

down with the weight of his own heart

and despair.

Now I realize you made me feel precious, weird and noble.

( your patriotism, cigarettes and small tragedies devoured me,

diminishing the intensity of my being and I hated what I was,

you were, we could never be)

You immortalized me gloriously,

giving me everything I could never have.

It was too heavy to be your symptom.

Couldn’t bear your incomprehension.

(didn’t know how to be your solace

or the mother you dreamt for your own child)

But now I can say shamelessly I loved you too.

( didn’t know I loved you – not as you deserved

or needed)

We are finally free, Tiger.

Life doesn’t need to happen again:

your poems still make my soul tremble

with awe and beauty.

Karla Bardanza

For Julio

The Mag - 192

                                             Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2013