from the “The Impossible Hours”
I hear a horse’s neigh
Night falls on the being I am not yet
I hear a dog bark
The bark and the neigh reach me
from another country, another life
They have crossed oceans
They have crossed mountains
They have crossed skies that have no
language
I refuse to say the word I thought
I was
The years crawl in my blood
and I already miss the being
that I am becoming
but that hasn’t fully arrived
I want to think that where I’m going
there will be no borders
No horizons
No need for conscience
I get lost like a dog’s bark in the night
Like a horse’s neigh
There is something tender in me
that I haven’t discovered
I will lose it
just as I am losing you
*
One day I will not be able to dream
and we will meet in a city
where language
won’t recognize us
A city where we can get rid
of our names
Imagine: To be able to call each other
with only our eyes
To be able to call each other
with the desire born
every time we touch the surface
of our skin
To exchange our mouths
To exchange our hands
so we can learn to touch
Imagine: To be inside the other
forever
If you leave, your hands stay
with me
If you kiss someone else you will kiss
with my mouth and not
with yours
I don’t want to leave my body
anymore
I don’t want to leave my body
anymore and enter
the dog’s that doesn’t know
about illusions and has no interest
in the future
It’s easy to say that I want to die
but it’s another thing to throw myself
out the window
*
I ask God to give me your pain
that disease that weighs on your soul
like a brick
I ask Him to give me your dark thoughts
that take you by the hand
towards the riverbank
You no longer have words for the world
and the world keeps
its silence
My God, bless me with the pain
of others
Give me my neighbor’s cancerous
tattoo
Gift me the undocumented
mother’s fear,
she whose light burns out
like the sun’s behind the horizon
when she sees
a border patrol truck
My God,
make my day bright
by giving me the sadness
and the anguish
of that child
who has been
separated
from her parents
As a child, I know how it feels to not have a father,
and as a father, I know
how it feels
to be separated
from a child
*
Lord bless me
with my mother’s chronic pneumonia
and with the terror she feels
when one of her children
steps out into the night
Others have asked this of You, Lord,
but I ask You again
Choose me
as Your court jester
I’ll make you laugh, Lord,
make you cringe
Slang you
This is how it dies, Lord
This is how You die, Lord
It’s not a plea
It’s my desire to kiss
the skull of your mouth
I don’t have the strength
to lift the infinite
of what dies
Do you have it?
***
Photograph of Octavio Quintanilla courtesy of Octavio Quintanilla.
