Death only

Death only

the heart passing through a tunnel

dark dark dark

Pablo Neruda

Death took off early

early rose the sun

early your head rolled over the pavement

Miguel Hernandez

Death is our legacy. It fulfills everything, it commands everything “dressed as an admiral”(Neruda). Shrunk, every day we hear the hum of the sickle that passed by and sigh with the relief of who wasn’t hit by it today. But death is jacking its nails into the flesh of others, it has gripped our country by the neck. Every day death looks straight in someone’s eyes. Meanwhile, many people look away, and they talk about hope and about battles not lost yet. But we did loose the war against darkness. Children where killed, grandparents committed suicide. We will never be the same. It is not the flag that has changed. The country where we were born is gone and will never return. And what will come out of this land soaked in blood? More empty words, endless babbling, or words like bullets that hit heads? Or more heads that turn away, avoiding the sight of the misfortune of others? Because if you think it's not about you, that it’s not going to happen to you, wait.

"They will call me, they will call us all.

You, and you, and me, we’ll take turns,

around glass lathes, before death.

And you’ll be exposed, we all will

be hit wham! by a bullet.

You know well. They’ll come

for you, for you, for me, for everyone.

And

for you. "

(Blas de Otero)

And when you think it’s not about you, they win. Because that’s what they wanted: to dismember us, to separate us, they wanted one pointing to the other not only for accusing each other, but for alienating the rest from the fate of the one who was reached by death today. Stateless they call us, but they made us stateless because they stripped us of our country, they are stealing it from us daily. But no, do not tell me that we will win, that we have not lost yet, because when a child is killed they killed my child and if an inmate committed suicide I lost a grandfather and if they killed the owner of the arepera they killed a friend of mine and when someone is arrested no one in this country is free.

Geraldina Mendez