by Malcolm Carvalho
I write
because
immortality
is still a pipe dream,
and someday,
long after I have gone,
my blood a speck
in the soil,
my bones one
with the dust
of this place
or another,
long after people have forgotten
how I looked
long after lovers can’t remember
how I smelt,
or how my skin
mingled with the air,
long after those friends and lovers themselves
have dissolved
in the chaotic earth of cities,
long after breaths have collapsed
in a stack,
fading
into columns
near the metro,
the trains
or underneath the bridge,
my words
might be all that’s left,
all that might
keep me from
being a leaf
that rustles
and slowly fades,
till only the veins remain
and then,
they too
disintegrate,
like rivers drying up
waiting for rains
that have failed to keep their promise
for a year and a half.
After all,
Aren’t we all made of the same skin?
Aren’t we all,
writers, non-writers alike,
stripped,
skin clinging to bones,
In this quest
for immortality,
this quest to leave behind
some of our watermarks
across time?
