If only sunflowers would fit in my bedroom.
A chair. His boots. His stained shirts.
If at least I could find, lost among my papers,
one of his letters, but nothing.
Nothing to name the man. Nothing to make him real.
If I could yell to him in ochre tones. Alternately
add myself to his razor. But nothing. Nothing can impede
his suicide. Because I would not be there. Because I wasn't
the one who drew wheatfields through his hands.
Timeless resource, this agony. Nothing.
Nothing to break this cloister. My nails are breaking
in their arrhythmia. My habits are gray. Deplorable.
The cell shudders. But nothing.
Nobody can impede his suicide.
There are no cataclysms arriving at my height. The barriers
cannot jump. If only sunflowers would fit in my bedroom
he wouldn't be bleeding. Taciturn. Frenetic.
Over the inert country of the Queen of Spades.
From Ballad of the Blood. Written 1991-1993, published in 1996.
About Maria Elena Cruz
Maria Elena Cruz Varela was born in 1953 in Colon (Cuba). In 1989, Varela won her country's National Award for Poetry, a prize given to her by the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists, which expelled her from its ranks in 1991. A vocal opponent of the Castro regime, she was imprisoned for her outspokenness from November 1991 until May 1993. Ballad of the Blood was written during her imprisonment. She is the mother of two children.