You were part of an invisible dress
That became heavier and heavier
As I dragged it like a dead animal’s
Fur across my shoulders, behind me,
Mutilating it, gangrenous, holding on
To matter equally torn and checkmating.
They just stared at my lipstick,
My eyelashes up high, the armoured
Neck and never wonder about the unseen
Old age eating me up from behind my back.
The voices that keep mumbling and screaming,
To change the past, to erase their actions and steps
We might stem from the same roots, but my sky is blue.
The record is scratched and dysfunctional.
I’ve extracted the tiniest piece of beauty.
I’ll stay there. The words that should have
Been uttered have rotten away in a dead chamber
Where nobody takes responsibility and knows no language to admit
What they did. Earth on hot air. What existed goes unnamed,
Unspoken, unheard of. I’ll set the banister on fire.
“Porträt Gertraud Luberich” by Leo Putz (1869-1940)
