Poem: The hidden salt!

By Arian Galdini

Joy has many relatives.

When the table is full,

chairs appear.

Hands remember your shoulder.

Names come easily to the mouth.

Even the distant

learn the way to your door.

A friend is known later.

When the phone has gone quiet

like a well

that will not take the bucket.

When your name no longer opens anything.

When your words come out broken

and no one has anything to gain

by lifting them carefully.

Then,

if someone remains,

do not ask why.

The man who explains too much

is often still counting

the cost of staying.

He does not come

to sweeten your life.

Too much sweetness

spoils the blood.

He comes as hidden salt.

Unseen.

Unpraised.

Silent in the mouth.

Yet without him

something inside you

begins to rot

before it smells.

He does not take away the wound.

He stays where it burns

and does not let you carry that fire

to the faces of others.

Even what is right

can wound

when it is offered only to soothe.

There is a mercy

that leaves you in your error

because it is afraid

to disturb your warmth.

He has another mercy.

A clean roughness.

It does not humiliate you.

It does not flatter you.

It does not let you use pain

as permission.

When you try

to make the whole sky guilty

for your darkness,

he does not shout you down.

He only refuses

to follow you

to the end of the lie.

That is enough.

I have known friendships

spoiled by a small gain,

by a nearness to power,

by a door that opened

only after someone else

had been forgotten.

They did not break at once.

They had long been without salt.

First they lost taste.

Then shame.

Then people went on speaking

as if they were close,

but the words

kept nothing alive.

I have known another kind.

It did not save me.

It gave me no speech.

It did not promise the pain would pass.

Some things do not pass.

They learn to live

without giving orders.

He came

when I had become difficult

even for myself.

He did not repair me.

He did not cleanse me.

He did not make me better.

He did not leave

when my darkness

was choosing the furniture

of its last room.

Like salt in open flesh,

his presence burned a little,

but the wound

did not take on

the smell of surrender.

Once, I too

failed to be a friend.

I left someone waiting

inside a silence

I called restraint.

I thought the unsaid word

would find its way.

I thought the one who loved me

would understand

even my absence.

But absence, often,

is abandonment

that lacked the courage

to show its face.

He did not accuse me.

That was heavier.

There are people

who forgive you

without making you innocent.

They do not ask

for your late blood.

They do not strike your fault

against your forehead.

They move a little farther away,

and only later

do you understand

you did not lose a companion.

You lost the salt

that kept alive in you

the part

that could not keep itself.

Feelings change weather.

He lets you return

without making you prove your worth.

He lets you be small

without becoming low,

weep

without becoming a victim,

lose

without handing your loss

your tongue.

One person did not leave.

Not when you were heavy.

Not when you had lost your shape.

Not when your words came out badly.

Not when your face

did not know what to carry.

Not when pride lay on your body

like wet clothing.

Not display.

Not sweetness.

Not the great salvation.

Only that presence

which dissolves

before you see it,

burns a little

when it must burn,

and leaves behind

a rough taste.

Without that taste

a person

begins to spoil

inside himself.

Arian Galdini