The Being Who Never Leaves

I never learned to look at shop windows without searching for the walking shape of your footsteps. The umbrella abandoned beside a rusted bicycle resembles you more than any living body. On the wet pavements, an old woman feeds the pigeons with the same patience you once had for all the things I forgot. Someone plays Bach in an alleyway, and the notes drip down the walls like unspoken confessions. In the Red Light District, the red lights no longer burn. They resemble extinguished stars that never found their sky. Between two drunk tourists, I bend to pick up a filthy doll. I carry it home — perhaps it’s the only prayer I deserve. No street leads to you, but all seem to have kept the memory of your footsteps. Even the trams stop in the middle of your thought. And the bells of the Protestant churches have begun to toll in syllables that whisper your name in the tongue of the dead. You taught me nothing, except how to stand still in front of a photograph that no longer recognizes me. To clutch the coins of the day like broken host from a lost gospel. A man begs behind Central Station. His eyes hold the same void in which you kissed me once, without ever touching me. It was winter, and every snowflake melted with the weight of a liturgy descending from your silent lips. Here, between water and mist, I have only one altar: the bench where I once dreamed you leaving in a city that no longer believes pain can be sacred.