LA MORTE TI SEGUE

When someone you love is kidnapped by death

You become the victim. An obsession with the Reaper’s Scythe

Shadows you and the air has a vulture’s claws, scratching

The eyes and the skin as you are left watching and weighted

By loss. Death’s ruthlessness reminds you

Of his own singular obsession. As pain and heat rises, he rejoices

In the tears burning on your broken, melting heart.

Those tears become  hot blades, shredding the brain

As you continue to stare into absence, crying and cutting the soul.

Why do we keep watching? Because the black angel

With his skull like face has crept into our skin.

He draws his heat from the cold remains he leaves us with,

Turning the blood drained heart into a frozen stone of ruby ice.

When flesh is cold, life cannot beat. Roses wither,

Falling through dead soil’s abyss into the silence of the ground.

This “nothing” sound is torment then and splits the mind,

Shattering it, as glass from sand in a sterile desert.

Each step brings pain and the journey and its scale are vast,

With what seemed smooth, now boulder like, anguish clinging

To the soul and thus provoking wounds. Hard blood falls

From inner wounds. The straight grows strained,

And darkness suffocates.

Standing still in loss, you cross an endless landscape

Of nothingness and torment,

To which there never seems an end.

There is now only pain. And torment.

There is now glass and strain.

You wonder if you will ever feel again.

Elena Caldera
Translated/ Adapted by David Erdos