DEBTS Poem by Harkaitz Cano

According to the doctors, you lack calcium in your bones
and what they've just told you
sounds like an old person's disease.
‘An old person's disease and a woman's disease', whispers
your conscience
beside your left ear.
A woman's disease, that's a laugh. To tell the truth,
you wouldn't mind at all
coming back as a woman in your next life:
any transformation is a convoluted way
of gaining power, if you manage to retain
a shred of memory of who you were before. But old?
It's time you started to accept it.
Everything is a matter of time or
lack of time.
You put on a record a friend gave you
when you turned fifteen;
you can't bear that music for even five minutes.
Someone knocks on the door, a starving person,
‘You owe me for February'.
This may be the lament of a poor wretch
who finds death before his time
in a second celestial request.
February, the cruelest month.
An answer for the landlord comes to mind,
‘for religious reasons, would you mind
if we forgot about February, and I'll owe you
for two Marches instead'.
But you keep quiet.
The frame of the open door barely keeps you on your feet.
‘You owe me for February', you hear again.

You feel it, yes indeed,
the leech in your bones
now has a name:
February.