She said we'd never met before, but I knew that wasn't true. I heard her with the heart's ear, even if distant from sight, for she walked within caverns where the sun was hidden, missing the stars and the milky way, but she became the subject of my hymns, although I stood aloof. In the torrent of blood, I cannot say if her work was finished or if it was my silence who pushed her down, but like an onyx rose who twined herself with thorns, she swayed with each gust in dark tunnels, searching for shadows. I never knew which language she understood best, the lukewarm, sugared kind or the direct one with significance, and her undefined annoyance didn't wait for me for the things I wanted to say. Maybe I had arrived too late; maybe in her last bed, she forgot she was my mother. We'd met but she didn't know me. |