39. Poem by Gemma Gorga

Inertia is a strange property of matter. When you leave, for example, the air conserves the warmth of your body for a while, just as sand holds all night long the sad tepidness of the sun. When you leave, to stay with the same example, my hands persist in the caress, though there is no longer skin to fondle but only the carcass of memory decomposing in the stairwell. When you leave, there remains behind an invisible you, adhering to the smallest things: a hair on the pillowcase, perhaps, a gaze entwined with the beams of desire, a small crust of saliva in the commissures of the couch, a molecule of tenderness on the floor of the shower. It is not difficult to find you: love is my magnifying glass.
Translated by Julie Wark