Letting Myself Go Poem by Lauren Mendinueta

Only yesterday I was forty-nine.
Today, the first morning of April, 1977,
I looked for my face in the mirror,
my face even more broken
in the cracked mirror of the bathroom.
Dear body beyond my reach,
why do you stubbornly continue to show your reflection?
I am guilty of living.
I can see you've fallen apart
and in the recent and trembling past
your entire weight rests upon the lightness of sleep.
In childhood I saw you walking among the carious smiles
of the harbor,
running with legs spreadeagled
as if dodging the oaks,
covering yourself with sweaty hands zigzagging the busy cities
and nursing infants who
searched in vain for other liquids, not mercy.
I saw you, body,
rest your face upon the modest grave
that now evokes your very face.
I am nearly rubble,
an indistinguishable stain
on the mirrors of asylums and supermarkets.
I know that I am alive because I feel pain;
the body is an absurd obligatory
extension of the mind.

Translation: 2010, Constance Lardas