Demasiada cordura puede ser

la peor de las locuras,

ver la vida como es

y no como debería de ser.

 

In the streets lay silence.

Silence spoke

for the storm unweathered

in our crystallized city,

the glass a mirror

showing the real hearts

of humanity.

 

There are times

when the glass breaks.

An echo of distress,

a domino effect of

immunity failing. But then.

 

Many years after that night,

during the rain,

I bought a bag of roasted chestnuts on

Broadway, the kind that fill your entire body with

warmth at the moment you believe

you can no longer resist the gravity of

winter, a silence that drowns your body

in the midst of thieves, impostors,

basket cases, a mirage that proves existence.

I sometimes felt liberated by the

faceless thousands that broke my concentration

as I headed home,

but when faced with the perpetual torments

and torrents of rain that drowned

my resolve to follow the tracks

I laid before me,

I somehow discovered

beneath my skin

some cosmic force

to find a kindred face

among the faceless.

 

Elephants of this world

can communicate with each other, despite

miles and miles between them, their utterances

opaque, impenetrable to humans,

who are too busy hearing

to listen. But every so often, something

accidentally taps our eardrums, the resonance

reverberating throughout our bodies,

conjuring up

the very medicine needed,

a face so familiar

despite its foreignness,

the elixir to quench

that unavoidable thirst we feel

as we walk between the world and

the world to come.