Epilogue

by Simon Anton Nino Diego Baena

Never forget to always open the window
and let the light pass through unhindered
just like the very first time she allowed you
to hold her hand in the park. And when
the ashes settle all over the horizon, there
are memories worth remembering: the story
of the flame and the moth in your youth
how it puts you to sleep, the lost innocence
of tenderness and security as if the structures
would never collapse, after all, we are tragedy
woven with beauty; and the years engraved
itself on your flesh as dried rivers of a blistered
landscape where the rain never pours and
the scent of asphalt triumphs. Yet you cling
to pebbles and acacia trees that line up
like a phalanx in the outskirts of your dying
city where the future is in the past and
the present is only the moment of a funeral,
and what remains of that image is a portrait
of what the world can never restore.