Saturday, July 13, 2013

For Florentino: Saint of Desperate Lovers



 “My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse.”
                                -Florentino Ariza, Love in the Time of Cholera

And in each chamber is a lover
that I do not want or do not need
but cannot extract and sometimes
these phantoms of passion and history that never
truly belonged to me bring condolences
and more frequently a searing nostalgia that provokes
old men to throw themselves from old bridges
so that my heart, like the old wrinkled matron of the house
who no longer takes money in exchange for the offering
of her body, resigns herself to everything the way it is
and lays awake at night with a prayer of thanksgiving on her lips
for the good fortune of too much loving.

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