VOICES Poem by Carlos López Degregori

Someone comes to your room tonight and says into your ear: get up, I've come for you.

The voice enters your dream as if it were a needle or a wave. You hear it calling you insistently.

You wake.

You rise and move about the house a final time. You sit in every chair so that they'll hold your body's shape forever, you slash your clothes because you'll never need them now, you kill the flowers, one by one, that fill the vases, you smash the plates, you sip the oil from all the lamps, undress the mirrors.

You tell the blazing air your favorite memories and poems: you won't be seeing them again: you'll never kiss or breathe or sleep them: you'll never hear them sad or lusty or trace their awful contours with your fingertips.

But there's a single word that you don't want to leave behind and you don't know which one it is.
But there's a single certain gesture you should take with you so that it always sets your face ablaze.
But there's a single love you'll need tomorrow when the hour of the exculpation comes.

And so you go to your bedroom and something has changed. There's someone breathing in the darkness. You draw closer and say into its ear: get up, I've come for you.