BETELGEUSE

Waking up late, dreams discontinued. I never saw those people, those places, those situations: an Asian woman in a pharmacy; a heavy-metal beggar; a postman wandering an unidentifiable city. This, after falling asleep to your image. Until I woke up, sweaty, regretful. Damn the pill — the ray compressed. But moving on. Cheers to the drinks. Cheers to the antibodies. The antibodies, never your antibody. And our rope, stronger than everything it holds together. Let’s go. I’m going. I’m going anywhere.

I intuit everything through that precise light born at the precise moment we met. A black automaton dictionary. Of the sacrifice no one reads. Of the sacrifice that reads what no one sees. Of the sacrifice that is: sacrifice + nothing = sacrifice. Of the sacrifice that multiplied — as we well know — amounts to zero.

For just as it is, thanks to mathematics, I went from you to my childhood. To meet the unsolvable equation. To reconcile naturalness with the fear of losing you… Measuring the fear of hurting you against your absolute indifference… Anyway, maybe from this I could inspire some new juggling act, some variation in the trillion. Interest, none.

Afterward, everything is already here, already here, now, already. Forget memory: obscene is the way its diameter swells and expands, like having the Sun next to Betelgeuse. A grain of sand against the mountain. Matter-light 2 = 0. Woe to the being: the Supernova.

Translated from my 2017 book, Estrada dos Prazeres (Letras Paralelas). For more of my original work in Portuguese, please visit my website: Pedro Góis Nogueira.