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Facing away
from the Adriatic,
the loneliest person
may bend magnets
into question marks.
What map do you give
sailors who live
on a planet without land—
covered by one ocean?
There can neither
be hope in answers,
nor hope for an answer—
still, the captain’s tongue must
keep crashing like waves
nearing the end of a beginning;
that’s how I see you, Ravenna;
it’s here among your crosses
where the streets welcome
me home yet still
keep their distance.
Your alleys are so familiar,
I can walk among
them without recalling
their names,
and likewise so foreign
if I can’t speak
their language—
or worse yet,
when I no longer trust them.
All roads leading out
are parents no one misses.
Thousands of trains
have arrived here bringing
futures already predicted—
a thousand more will come
with a past I always
recall differently.
Faces glance away
like winds born
with one speed.
Every hand touches
you like a history
whose fingerprints
are always the same.
Why can’t hereafters
read their own diaries?
Why can’t once upon a times
happen just once?
Let me, again,
become my own saint—
believe everyone,
yet have faith
in only my Faith.
I’ll be a desert
that stops doubting
the sun’s existence.
I’ll follow a waterfall
that doesn’t trust gravity,
but still listens to it.
What’s the point?
I can’t separate
my self-conscious outlook
from the mirrors
I look at all day—
that’s vanity.
What I really want
is to escape from a hell
I no longer believe in.
Sitting alone
at Piazza San Francesco,
it’s hard to read
the same book
again and again,
and that’s why
I haven’t read it.
Like the sound of footsteps
and laughter,
the world doesn’t change—
no matter which way you go.
There are millions of roads
going west,
but only one direction
to get there.
Yet, I’d still miss the sun,
even if light didn’t exist.
I would keep making plans
if the future had no tense.
These are the lessons
no one taught in school,
or maybe I missed them thinking
about who I wanted to be,
where I wanted to live,
and how I would ache
for a woman whose name
means “happiness.”
Poetic Voices
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