Salt Rooms

Suffocated

I remember the hands, not the names.
sunken geographies, buried coordinates
I have a map drawn on my palm
of cities collapsing into sleep.

The evening light cut the room in half
towns learn to disappear
Old photographs no one dares to turn anymore
Slow, like glass
Learning how to become sky.

We mistook staying young
For being untouched,

The rooms I no longer live in
Are what's left at the bottom
When water stops being sea
And becomes only the memory of salt.

These rooms have stopped having walls.
They've become distance,
An endless hallway
Made of the light of one afternoon
I can no longer place in any year.

I call "home" a handful of corners
Where the dust has learned
The shape of our absent bodies.
I call "you" a sound
My tongue still makes,
Out of habit,
When the silence starts to sound too much like a question.

The ending was never the wound.
It was the morning after,
When the seasons changed their names,
I remained there,
Beneath the last sentence
Your mouth never finished

All that remains
Is the shape of things,
Never the things.
The empty space where a piece of furniture stood,
The mark on the wall
Where we used to hang time.

There's an animal asleep
under everything I've loved.
I don't wake it.
I don't dare to.
It has your eyes, I think,
Or maybe just the same patience
As things waiting to be forgotten completely.

Only a shadow at the bottom,
Only geography,
Only salt.