The Night

The night —

It was not the skin, but the fire beneath
that hurt —slowly, very slowly.

It learned to beat inside my sleeping chest,
something unnamed, held in a restrained tremor.

A caged heartbeat, a blind insect,
striking the glass of its own ego.
I never knew whether it was me,
or some ancient creature,

asking to be let out, with a punishing voice.

A heart that learned to break without guidance,
a body that confines the enemy within its alchemy,
that only pretends to be alive

—and sometimes, not even that—,
a fleshless echo, a memory of excess.

All that remains is the tremor of what still aches,
yet it can already be sensed in the burning pulse.
A promise of fracture, a prelude to fever,
the soul pulses, slowly, in its breaking.

For the first time —without tears, with a mute mouth—,
I saw the wound open, unable to scream:
may the night come.