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We remained alone. Shepherds, each herding his flock of
silence through a dark space. His face goes white from
chemotherapy. His face is the other same. After growing in
him undetected for seventy-five years, he now presses the
other same face from within, so his own cheek becomes
more and more present in vanishing. He turns, but does not
click on the light. As if, following the traces of an erased
path, he’d gone too far. From there the word returns
through the darkness. Barefoot and without a body, the
voice walks behind the sheep. Soft as wool, it moves
through the kitchen. The darkness is vast, and the path
traveled is as small as an orange, another planet on the
sideboard.
That he’s happy as never before in his life, he says into the
silence. That he truly feels love, a hoarse voice after a sheer
silence. As if it had stepped off a cliff into the arms of the
abyss, the voice says, that it loves, loves and is loved. Under
the window, the wind sways the crown in the night,
unravels its leaves, and all the crows from the sky.