Mother!

Come, lean close. Listen to my head as it spills rich stories of places I have not yet traveled. Bring me ink, incarnate, visceral. Bring me ink the color of blood, blood! True, deep crimson. I need to stain the white of the page with the pulse of what hasn’t happened yet.

Mother! Run your hand through my hair. Let your fingers find the map of my restlessness.

I have not traveled, not yet, and yet my memory refuses to hold anything but departures. I am going to travel. I have a thirst, a dry, aching hollow in the throat that only the horizon can satisfy. I promise you: I will know how to travel. I will learn the secret language of distance.

And when I return? It will be to climb the steps of your house, one by one. I will memorize the rhythm of those stairs by heart. Once I arrive, I will sit by your side. You will sew, your needle piercing the silence, and I will tell you of my journeys. The ones I lived will be so indistinguishable from the ones I only dreamed; both written with the same ink, both printed in the same blur of poetry and prose.

Mother! Tie your hands to mine. Tie them in a blind knot, so tight it becomes a part of our skin. I want to be an object belonging to this house. Like the table. I want to have a shape that serves a purpose here, a fixity, just like that table where we gathered to eat and to remember. I want to be the solid wood of our shared moments.

Mother! Pass your hand over my head once more.

When you touch me, the world stops its frantic invention. When you touch me, everything is, finally, true.

Eternal longing.

©️Beatriz Esmer