Poem: The silence of a broken star!

By Arian Galdini

(A light for Lira’s Silence)

On the third floor of an old house,

where the stairs rose slowly,

as if they remembered the feet

that never came back the same,

a small pillow rests,

embroidered with red thread.

No one had moved it for years.

Not because it was holy.

Not because it held some written last word.

Only because, in that room,

there were things

a hand could no longer touch

without becoming guilty at once.

She had sewn the thread.

She had drawn the needle through slowly,

with the quiet patience of someone

who does not separate the wound from the work,

or waiting from the way

a house keeps for a person

one small place

where he need not fall.

In the corner, a dark cup

still held the shadow of a lip.

On the shelf, a book lay open

at the page where the sentence broke off,

as though someone had heard

a voice in the courtyard

and had never come back.

He entered late.

He did not come as a man asking forgiveness,

nor as someone come to reclaim

what time had left outside his door.

He came with the bitter care

of those who know

that some rooms do not open for them,

but only to see

whether absence had remained alive.

On the table he found the letter.

It was not long.

It did not ask for tears.

It blamed no one.

She had written only this,

Do not speak my name

when the room is quiet.

Some things die

as soon as people draw them out

from the silence where they learned to live.

He read it once.

Then he lowered the letter,

as one lowers a tired child

onto the threshold of a house

where no one asks

why he is late.

Outside, the city was lighting itself.

Cold glass lit in people’s hands.

Faces drew near without breath.

Voices passed without bodies.

Inside small glittering lights,

people searched for one another

without ever reaching another human being.

He looked at the pillow.

At its center, the red thread

was no longer as red as it had been.

It had faded a little,

not from forgetfulness,

but from the nights that had fallen over it

without ever putting it out.

Where the needle had entered,

the cloth held tiny holes.

Too small

to be called wounds.

Too deep

to be only handiwork.

He reached with his fingers,

but did not touch it.

In that thread remained

a face bent over cloth,

an empty place beside the table,

and a name

that had not asked to be called.

He sat down by the wall.

From outside came the sound of a car,

then a distant laugh,

then nothing that could be kept in memory.

In the room, only the thread remained.

It did not speak.

It did not accuse.

It did not explain the years.

It stayed there,

sewn into the cloth,

like thin blood

that no longer flowed,

only so her shape

would not come undone.

He took nothing.

He only looked.

Moonlight crossed a little of the floor,

broken at one edge.

On the pillow, the thread seemed,

for a moment, more alive.

He did not weep.

Tears would have eased him,

and that room

had given him no right

to relief.

He only bowed his head

and remained a long while,

until the night lost its color

and morning came,

as things come

when they know nothing of loss.

When he rose,

he did not take the letter.

He did not take the book.

He did not take the pillow.

At the threshold, he stopped.

Her name came to his mouth,

but did not leave it.

The door closed slowly.

In the room remained the pillow.

On the pillow, the red thread.

In the thread, that part of her

which had refused

to become memory.

And when the city woke,

with its lights, its calls,

with hands touching glass

before touching a face,

on the third floor

of that old house,

a broken star

still had not fallen.

Not in the sky.

In the small place

where the needle had passed

to hold together

what two hands

could not.

Arian Galdini