Failure

What I took for victory is only smoke.

Failure, rock bottom language, trail from a different more demanding place, your handwriting is difficult to make out.

When you put your mark on my forehead, I never thought about the message you were bringing, more valuable than any triumph.

Your blazing face pursued me and I didn’t know it was to save me,

For my own good you’ve pushed me into corners, denied me easy successes, deprived me of ways out.

It was me you meant to defend by not granting me brilliance.

Purely out of love for me you’ve manipulated the emptiness that on so many nights has made me speak feverishly to an absent woman.

To protect me you made way for others, led a woman to prefer someone more resolute, removed me from suicidal trades.

You’ve always helped me out.

Yes, your ulcerous, spat on, hateful body has received me in my purest form to hand me over to the clarity of the desert.

Out of madness I’ve cursed you, ill-used you, blasphemed against you.

You don’t exist.

You were invented by delirious pride.

How much I owe you!

You elevated me to a new rank washing me with a rough sponge, throwing me on to my true battlefield, assigning me the weapons left behind by victory.

You led me by the hand to the only water that mirrors me.

Because of you I don’t know the anxiety of playing a role, using force to stay on a rung, climbing by me own effort, quarreling over status, inflating myself till I burst.

You’ve made me humble, silent and rebellious.

I don’t sing you for what you are, but for what you haven’t let me be. For not giving me a different life. For hemming me in.

You’ve offered me only nakedness.

It’s true that you taught me roughly –and you cauterized me yourself!– but you also gave me the happiness of not fearing you.

Thanks for taking thickness from me in exchange for large handwriting.

Thanks to you who deprived me of swellings.

Thanks for the riches to which you compelled me.

Thanks for building my home with clay.

Thanks for pushing me aside.

Thanks.