Love knocked on the shutters of my windows, my shatterproof glasses,
with the knuckles of delicate fingers, different from mine, scarred by blows given and received,
blinding me with the wonder of gaining once more an opportunity to waste,
of still having a train to wait for at Milan station.
You are the beauty of a cloud swallowed by the engines of a Tupolev Tu‑144,
you are the radiant smile of a child in oncological rehabilitation,
you are a pencil sharpened to the extreme, piercing the backs of my hands,
as abyssal as the Chicxulub crater; your eyes extinguish my banks of fog.
Love has swept away every cheval de frise of mine with the naturalness of a flamethrower,
flushing out antibodies and anti-woman mines scattered across the territories of my battles,
gifting me a weekly mobile phone plan
with five thousand minutes to squander.
You are the toxic rainbow coloring the rain-filled seas of industrial cities,
stinging, staining my clothes, painting my face, hurling yourself upon me,
contaminating my movements with radioactivity, forcing me to insinuate myself beneath your skin,
you are the splendor of combat and surrender, of combat and surrender,
the splendor of blank space, to fill or to tear away.
Love that teaches me to care for you, you who sleep on the couch
with the serenity of a tiger cub, you who dream of butterflies and ISBN codes,
un-teaches me to care for my own care, transforms me into an unknown soldier
laid to rest in the shrine of your carefree existence.
Distant love, you conquer the terror of death
with the same valor of the immortality of art,
reviving the missionary zeal of a hermit in twisted rhymes,
accustomed to surviving in the shadows.