SHAPE OF ABSENCE V
During the summer evenings when the public parks
shut down
baby girls and their nannies return home
while some younger girls have already fallen asleep
in their strollers
and the silent invisible procession of dead girls comes
behind them
pale girls with undone hair holding their dry flower bouquets
in their tied hands like short poems that
never learned to recite from their hearts.
They stand and from afar observe the ribbons and toys hanging
at the kiosks,
the fully lit humble display window of the local store
leaving behind each of their steps an internal space that is
automatically filled
by a purple rosy shadow. They reach just outside
their homes
and they look inside their closed windows;
suddenly they raise their hands but they don’t knock at the
shutter. Their parents,
inside the house hear the knock; they let their napkin fall
off the table
as if a large dry leaf falls in time. They open the door.
No one is there. They only see
the faded stars, the forlorn sky, the forlorn world and
they close the door again; they go back to their children.
Libros Libertad 