Last Requests
Poetry
We don’t unmask ourselves to each other
skin thickened by a thousand cuts
veins bled dry.
We become our facades
and retreat
impenetrable by necessity.
So I begged you,
“Come away with me to the desert
give up your heavy garb of stoicism”
Alone with each other we might speak
of wordless truths
of moths
silently seeking the globular moon
harmonizing with sage and crickets.
And here,
I lay my thoughts before you
small stones in the sand
for ants to interpret
with their Formic myth.
And I don’t remember being so bare and cast out
as I was in the fury of loves ocean.
Will you take me now?
My quivering old flesh?
Call me blade of grass
cut my trembling shaft
then bear my body away.
Call me snail or tortoise
I live inside myself
permanently masked
for the comfort of all.
Andrea Juillerat-Olvera 2020
