When I saw you,
_after your son's last breath;
standing beside his coffin
like a Prince's Guardian,
keeping away all the trouble, the arrows, the pain,
the noise disturbing his eternal sleep …
keeping away everything from his castle, at the top of the altar stairs …
I stop breathing again, I pause … I am oblivion.
[Yesterday was profound,
_after is unbearable]
I cannot enter your soul anymore.
Your dark-chocolate eyes closed forever, looking at your son, freezing his image …
an image far away from the cold coffin all around his body.
Far from the castle, Woman Mother, I can only see you in a rare glimpse.
And my eyes hurt
as your son's coffin transforms into a crib
and you lull like tucking him into bed,
in the most beautiful image offered to the world.
_after has tremendous beauty …
I can sense that now, Woman Mother.
Pain transformed into something else …
What do you do, Mother, to ease the pain?
Your pain that seems like an incandescent light behind a mountain?
A light that even God cannot see or eclipse - I dare to guess …
You and your son are the same committed body.
You and your son are the same flesh, like in birth.
“Just a last embrace” – a beautiful cuddle before someone nails the coffin.
… If only I could draw that moment …
with the speed of a hummingbird's wings …
You are Pièta …
You, holding his body …
while holding back the torment and choking,
for the sake of a love photogram.
In his death ceremony,
In his _after,
[while some ancient ebony women sing the most moving elegies,
reminding me of a bare feet procession under the sun …]
You dance a traditional trance next to your Prince's coffin,
challenging him with his little boy's stories …
“Do you remember, son?”
“Do you remember us, son?”
and you listen to his silent and pale answers
because he speaks to you, only to you.
As I approach you to kiss his face
before some stranger in a black-tie nail his coffin,
You spell something so obvious,
“He won't feel your touch”
You spell me gently
while composing the shroud and the veil,
with the softest hands
trying not to wake him up.
And I see you uprising and you are sacred, you are a shrine.
