21/01/2026
A flower on the floor of the room, a Pacific sea flower on the floor, on the floor a white flower, a flower I cultivate in my chest, a white flower. White, white, leaden, a flower on the floor. A white flower on the floor. A white flower, Pacific-sea white, salt-white, bone-white, milk-white, leaden white. A flower on the floor of the room, on the floor of the world, on the floor of my ribs. A white flower I cultivate in my chest (white, white, white) until the petals feel like breath and the breath feels like petal.
I look at it and my body hurts. My body hurts from seeing it: the bright insistence, the quiet cruelty of its purity, the way it refuses to explain itself. A white flower on the floor and the floor becomes a sentence I cannot finish. White on white, and still it cuts. It hurts my wrists, my neck, the soft hinge behind my knees. It hurts as if the flower were a small lamp placed too close to the nerves. It hurts as if light could bruise.
White flower, white flower, white flower again. I say it until language becomes texture. I say it until the word “white” turns heavy, turns metallic, turns leaden, turns into a weight I carry from room to room. A flower on the floor, and I am kneeling without kneeling. A flower on the floor, and I am praying without prayer.
And then,José Martí. Martí like a thread pulled through the chest. Martí like a match struck in a dark pocket. Thinking of Martí, my soul becomes lighter, lighter, not because the world becomes easy, but...