Exhuming Jonah

María Eugenia Colón Vázquez
Departamento de Filosofía
Facultad de Humanidades, UPR RP 

 

Recibido: 09/03/2023; Revisado: 18/05/2023; Aceptado: 31/05/2023 

 

 

Painted with bruises, the sky saw me stagger drunk into the crashing waves and call your name. The gods watched me betray my dreams of condemnation: the freedom maliciously thrust upon me: bones flung to a starving dog.  

 

In the morning of my demented cry, back when I was as damaged and brittle as bandaged skin, I phoned you, my next of kin. Yes, I whirlpooled with death thinking you’d make space for me on the seabed.    

  

But finding you was like discerning the soil from the ashes. So, I prostrated myself and covered my skin: I was always looking down.   

  

And still, I ask: why can’t I write about you? If not noise what could ever convey this deafening silence? What am I failing to construe from your memory? Should I try and find where the carousel begins? Back before I spent half a decade rewriting the script and acting out the lines, before I played each character and chose which was mine.        

There was no future to define- in those days.  

 

I was arrogant enough to think that reading you like a road sign would lead me to your affection. Clumsily, I tried to solve my problem with knowledge but knowing everything meant I could do nothing.  

 

After depriving each other of the dignity of unintelligibility: I finally realized friendships shouldn’t be based on understanding.  

 

 I’ve fled your absence, and yet I squander my time looking at myself through the eyes of a lost friend. Why disentomb those marrowless bones/those spineless memories?  

  

Tonight; the romance lies 

in pretending we are not here 

If you lay me down in my used nightgown 

and kiss my furrowed brow 

Side my side in the lumpy bed 

I’ll count all the ways you left me for dead 

  

Then we’ll lift the covers 

so she can crawl between us 

 

Esta obra está bajo una licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial 4.0 Internacional.   

Posted on May 31, 2023 .