Mariana Sabino is a freelance writer. Her short stories and articles can be found in Mediterranean Poetry, The Humanist, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Culture Unplugged, Taste of Cinema, among other places.
My Town
Does not exist.
Anymore. The rubble of memory
Remains. Stains the senses, droplets
of red and anise. Debris and humans
Interchangeable. Wears, my town,
her caul like a crown.
Lapping up trinkets, nostalgia,
Crumbs of time.
Things the dead leave behind.
Three years, five years – fifty.
Sand-like time, burrows and flies.
Still. Beauty, salty, stings the tongue.
On the Street
There’s this man with an hourglass figure
His sway natural, unaware of itself.
He’s old and he wears old man’s clothes.
Beige and brown, cinched by a belt.
He has a hat on. He brings his hand to it,
patting it down. On account of the wind,
that whistling wind — incessant.
He walks with his hand on his hatted head.
And he sways with the rays that light him.
He travels in a straight line.
That curves on him.
He turns around. And comes to a halt.
He’s got a glass eye.
Blue, his color of choice.
He stands there, like maybe he’s
forgotten something.
But he doesn’t walk back.
Or go anywhere.
He just stands there, still. With
his glass eye and his runaway hat.
That heeds to the wind.
It howls.