Before my mom gave me birth
I’ve known my mother
since before I had a shape,
when my soul — a seed of silent stars,
was still searching for its furrow.
I was an imperceptible vibration,
a faint flicker in the chasm
between being and not-being,
and she — the only soil
where I could take root.
She never promised
time would be gentle,
but
she gave me her shoulders
to carry it.
Often,
my path is nothing
but a palimpsest
without lantern or ink.
I’ve come this far
not because I could,
but because,
my mother’s prayers and hands,
burned and cracked by time,
stitched the skin
of my words and wounds
with light.
She was a root
that did not break before the storm,
the hope
within the wet eye of a child
learning, slowly, how to die.
And so it is,
as long as I can still hear her voice,
my soul still has a place
what I can call “home.”
But time, that silent thief,
has tattooed longing into my bones,
even
before I was born
onto this earth.
Each second
becomes a treasure
I clutch to my chest,
praying the wind
won’t steal her from my arms
like a dried leaf
scattered around me.
There’s a burning fire within me
from which you gave me life,
a flame that keeps me from weeping
like a man without a God.
A living light
I shall wear always
like a talisman carved
from an undying fire.
Your name shall become my new faith,
one that asks for no other altar
but your echo,
whispered softly,
when my prayers has no more words,
only tears.
I will write you in ink made of my blood,
not upon parchment,
but on the temple of eternity,
and I will speak your name
in all my silent sanctuaries,
like the liturgy of a son
who never fully broke away
from the womb that bore him,
until light splits once more in two,
and your footsteps, a shining beam in the absolute abyss,
will come to bring me back home.
Copyright ©
Florin Lacatus
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