She smelled like butter.
Her face was the warmest of all.
Her face was the first thing
You changed.
Your hands
Ever-moulding
Ever-frustrated
Degenerating her.
Was it her expectations?
Her dreams and desires?
What was it exactly that frustrated and
Angered you so?
I remember her lips well.
Now I can’t see them no more.
I saw the blood on the floor.
The knife wandering violently from hand to hand.
Her face downward-bound.
What is it you do when you say you love?
Why is her body losing blood?
Why was it her hand that grabbed the knife?
Why was she doing this to herself?
What are you looking at?
Why do you involve her if your love can never be pure?
You know that love is capable of anything.
The blood leaving her body too.
She putting the knife through her skin too.
That’s what love can do too.
Love can go a million ways,
Can have a million faces
Intentions and disasters.
But you cannot let her go
And you brought her here.
She thinks she’s lost, she’s hitting every wall,
Heart forward.
You could put an end to this, but things have already derailed.
How can you observe these consequences
Of what you dare to call love?
They walk back to back,
The two extremes,
Is it hate?
Is it indifference?
We’re getting closer to your core,
What you are doing
To her in the name of love,
As you kiss her
Telling her that things will be all right
Knowing that they never will
You know yourself that well
And yet the lies leave your lips like flies
Entering her skull.
You’re poisonous and you don’t care.
If she could only see your actions clearly.
But she can’t, she can only hear the words
The words she needs to hear, wants to, chooses to extract from you,
The three syllables whose actions changed her face
Beyond recognition.
“Cantatrice” by Bernardo Cavallino
Croque-Melpomene 