La casa se derrumbó / Antonia Palacios

The house collapsed

The house collapsed. It left some scattered dust, slabs of hard cement. It also left memories scattered everywhere. The roof that overflowed with the stirring of doves also came down. I don’t want to rebuild the house, lift new walls, or doors, or roof tiles, or a small window through which the world passed, or that wide threshold where the front door towered and I would penetrate the days, nights, seeking my warmth there. The house collapsed, a transparent house where the day would light up and a thick darkness would tremble at night. Nothing was left of the house, not the light on the walls nor the patio’s splendor. Only silence moves through the vast empty space and the sterile words whose thin filaments the wind will dissolve. I will remain in the open air watching the fog in the trees until the arrival of death, a house erected by time that will never collapse.




{ Antonia Palacios, Ese oscuro animal del sueño, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1991 }