Overture in C Minor

And now —
let the opera of desire begin.

I want your love —
not the docile kind, not the tepid, not the one that sleeps early—
but the kind that burns beneath crystal lamps
while the orchestra unravels a forbidden waltz.
I want your love with the scent of midnight,
with long gloves and gazes that undress more slowly than hands.
You and I could write a bad romance,
the kind that morality condemns
and history remembers with envy.

I want your madness —
the kind that laughs on balconies beneath the golden rain,
the kind that signs letters with trembling ink
and kisses as if the world were to end at dawn.
Give me your vertigo,
your elegant fever,
your irreverent impulse against the rules of marble.
Let us be scandal in the salons,
a burning whisper behind silk fans,
a perpetual rumor on others’ lips.

I want your sex
like a secret of dethroned kings,
like a sacred pact between kindled shadows.
Let our skins conspire
while the clock beats
with the cruel patience of the inevitable.

You and I —
broken jewels upon black velvet,
accomplices of excess,
architects of a sublime disaster.
Let them call us sin.
Let them call us mistake.
Let them call us bad romance.
But let them never say
that it was not glorious.

And if the world collapses upon our throats,
if the stained-glass windows shatter with a cry of wounded colors,
let them find us among ruins, embraced,
crowned by the dust of empires.
For there is no tragedy more pure
than the one chosen with open lips.

Let us make of scandal a hymn,
of trembling a homeland,
of sweat a secret liturgy.
Let each kiss be a sustained note
until it breaks the breath of the universe.

If we must fall,
let it be as dynasties fall:
among torn velvets,
spilled goblets,
and one last chord resounding
in the infinite vault of memory.

Let us love each other with the elegant fury
of the accursed heroes,
with the burning solemnity
of those who know that paradise
is merely a rumor
compared to the intensity of shared hell.

Let them write our story in dark marble,
let the poets recite it with trembling voice,
let the mothers forbid it and the children desire it.

And when the curtain descends
over our exhausted and victorious bodies,
let there remain floating in the air —
like a perfume impossible to forget —
the certainty that we were fire,
we were excess,
we were destiny.

And may they never,
not even in the final judgment of silence,
be able to deny
that we burned like gods.

#randomhouse
#osirisvaldéslópez

All ©️ rights reserved. Chicago, United States.