When No One Wants to Breathe

Life was that jumble of faces and circling vultures.
You were part of the equation or they erased you.
I would have to take up arms to be noticed.

I can write.
Denounce or leave a small trace of anguish in the headlines and in memory.
I can strap on a homemade bomb and blow myself to pieces.
But that wouldn’t be, at the very least, poetic.
Nor pictographic.

If I abandon writing, I can sell you a bouquet of artificial sunflowers and gardenias; on the back it reads “made in China.”
The quality is very good.
I have slippers, a red hat, and I can improvise a belly and a beard.
Go out into the street and screen-print something that frightens or awakens dormant consciences.
Instruct or set in motion the small snowball that later turns into a torment of screams and placards, the crowd without red colors.
Only the mass that explodes and refuses to breathe.

They no longer want to breathe.
Ropes are tied around their necks and they give up; they themselves throw themselves into the void.
Their faces are a gaunt radiance from other times.
We do not live in golden ages—never.
We improvise.
We use stone for rudimentary tools and chew on branches.
We could fish, gather, or live the moment, but only that.

The sea was that crude sequence that separates us.
You throw bottles.
I wait for them, read the messages, treasure them.
Then I have to sell the bottles.
Hunt butterflies and cut off their wings.
It pays very well: for every thousand scorched butterflies, a small slip of paper to buy a crumb of bread.

My art is like lightning.
It is unpredictable, but precise; it pulverizes everything it touches and is beautiful in its forms.
They can speculate, distance themselves from me, believe they minimize me, but my art opens paths, crosses valleys, and falls like rain.
It is invisible oxygen that seeps through your pores; it is cane, sugar, navy blue, and meter without rhymes, with assonance.
It is my unique and flexible art.

It is autumn and I can barely breathe.

Do you think it matters if no one reads?

I know that you do read; you are almost perfect.
You wander through the shadows and give light.
Everlasting. Goddess of art.

Be the guide once more.
Storms are coming, but you have made me think, scrape the rust off these keys that turn pulses into shrapnel.

Something must be done.

But I am still a Santa Claus without reindeer, in the middle of the night.
With intentions of drawing something beautiful, but that awakens hearts.

If they discover me, they will say that the Three Wise Men are a lie; I would hate to break those dreams.
Children are not brought by storks—we already know that.
Some will say, and how are they made,
in what ways,
surely they do filthy things,
on the floor,
in parks,
and we would cross avenues and travel through stations;
people fall apart, their pieces drop off,
they agonize.

Outside they die of cold,
in the humility of the night,
without witnesses,
without rules or laws to shelter them.

I want to be a child again and not lose the Three Wise Men.

Image created by me, using a prompt in Ai Grok.