another side of paradise

having not left my house in five weeks,

i started living in my dreams.

playing with time in my own hands,

seeing the hours sprint away from me.

i find myself back on the hills of Tibidabo 

in search of God — but i could not find it.

i find myself staring into the sun.

our eyes meet, singing a song only us could hear

until it becomes too loud. i am put back to the silence

in my room. i drink my tears to feel the ocean again.

i leave my spirit and sit beside it, 

watching my body erode in unearthly harmonies.

she lies there, weeping, missing the afternoon bliss,

letting the light become her enemy

as i make friends with a starling’s shadow

from inside the window, sunbeams stand close to me.

in darkness and in light, i am still all my mistakes

so i let her weep, caressing her hair,

whistling in the wind’s rhythm

until she lets me back inside. i tell her,

We are all the women in the world:

the poets and the mothers,

the smokers and the young

— fragments of all our skins combined. 

the sun sets against our will.

We lie still, letting our body shiver in the dark.

the ceiling melts from how much we’ve looked at it.

We speak to the moon; it stares back at us, blinking.