In your wake,
In your silence,
a subtle soundtrack
swarms my head.

The melody of beeping monitors,
The rhythm of knuckles on bed rails,
And the verses, pitched in pain.

They only grow louder, still.

But, grabbing at the void
for any last sound of you,
I hear the wind rushing by
as the world just keeps turning,
I hear the cackling of atoms
that never stopped their motion,
I hear the grass strands
rudely displacing your plot’s dirt,
And reality itself popping
as it rips apart at the seams.

Truth is, I thought I’d feel silent without you,
But it’s grown louder, still.

I never forgave my twin brother
for abandoning me
for six minutes in our mother’s womb,
leaving me there alone,
terrified in the dark,
floating like an astronaut in that silent space,
while kisses rained down on him from the other side.

Those were the longest six minutes of my life
the minutes that made him the firstborn,
the favored one.

Ever since, I raced to be first:
out of the room,
out of the house,
to school,
to the cinema
even if it meant missing the end of the movie.

Then one day, I got distracted,
and he stepped out to the street before me.
Smiling that gentle smile,
he was struck by a car.

I remember my mother
how she rushed from the house
at the sound of the impact,
how she passed by me,
arms outstretched toward his lifeless body,
but she screamed my name.

To this day,
I’ve never corrected her mistake.

It was I who died,
and he who lived.

I reached out to you yesterday.
You had just told me how you felt,
You said it felt difficult.
I felt it too.

Three weeks it had been.
The silence echoed.
I questioned myself, had I done something?
I waited and waited…

I asked to meet up again,
You didn’t respond.
The day before you sounded different,
Then I heard nothing but my own heartbeat.

I had been over the moon.
I thought you might like me.
Do you though?
How am I to know.

My friend saw us,
Were you asked about it, and it felt too much?
Or were you honest…
You just felt like you were gonna mess something up.

Sometimes I feel
like I have so much to say to you
but you're not in my life yet.

I trust one day
you'll hear my words
not with your ears
but in your mind
and find your way to me
not by accident
but by the design
of the Causer of Causes.

When that day comes
I won't need words
I'll just hold you so tight
you'll hear every unspoken thought
through the silence
of my heartbeat.

I´ve shed my thoughts
into the silence of nights
nowhere to run,
I´m holding the gun.

I´m the one
trying to outrun,
hosting the hunt,
running at the front.

I´m my own prey,
gasping for the airway,
catching myself at the bay.

I want to be targeted,
not for you to misinterpret
I´d love to witness
my breath quickness,
how you´d hunt me-
then I´d be free.

With every breath I count,
there are few I miscount,
there´s one I´d steal
from you, to heal.