Florin Lacatus | + Follow Poet |
Free verse | + Fav Poem | Comment | Email | Print |

Tattoos

Since I no longer fit in my name,
I carry it beneath my heart,
like a relic unearthed
from a dead alphabet.
It is a cracked word,
written in blue ink
on the page of a lost Bible
in my grandparents' attic.

People call my name.
But their voices sound
like a bell lost
in an abandoned cathedral.
Perhaps they never learned
to utter the syllables of pain
in the language I was born from silence.

I grew up between walls with cracked icons
and elevators that ascended rarely,
like tired priests
who forget the names of saints.
My mother’s heart beat at the door of evening,
and no one answered.
Our words?
Fragments of stained glass
gathered after the earthquake.

My love
was a dog in the rain —
with eyes like two unspoken prayers,
barking at any light
that resembled salvation.

I write not to be forgiven,
but to be reminded by God
that I still exist.
My poems are confessions
without absolution,
prostrations written with fingers
on the walls of a clay cell.

I never had a room just for me,
only the low ceiling of life
and a window
that cried alone
when it snowed with memories.

I wrote my first poems
on the back of black-and-white photographs
where I smiled like a martyr
before execution.
Receipts from the bakery
became manuscripts,
and I keep them,
like Gospels
written in exile.

When I was small,
I believed God lived
in a subway station,
where only saints descend
and no one ascends
except with a verse on their lips.

I am afraid of mirrors
that ask me, "Who are you?"
and of my voice,
which has learned to be silent
even in prayer.

Between a slap and an embrace
there is only a held breath.
And the hardest thing
is to say:
"Today I did not cry,
but no one comforted me."

I wrote to you until my vowels bled.
Poetry remained between us
like an unfinished wedding —
without an altar, without witnesses,
only the word "amen"
spoken in a whisper.

Our love
was a fire at the Library of Heaven.
Everyone watched the flames,
no one saved a poem.
And yet,
our names smoked
between the burnt pages.

I did not lose you in one day,
but in every day
when my name
was no longer a prayer to you,
but a memory.

You left me my heart
like a forest of crosses.
Poets came to see it —
to steal wood for metaphors,
and left,
forgetting to bow.

At its peak,
I carried you like a saint
written in the language of longing.
Everyone read you.
But no one knew
that each verse
was a wound.

Now I write with silence,
and you,
are the most beautiful poem
that died
without ever being published.

Copyright © Florin Lacatus | Year Posted 2025

Please Login to post a comment