To forget where I came from

To be silent in all the languages I speak
To give up the different dialects
mingled in my mind

To give up the desire to leave
a far-away street
before I feel what’s missing

To give up the man
who didn’t realize
when we made love
it would be impossible to hurt me

To give up all my maps
on Via della Conciliazione
where my lover held his foreign name
between his teeth

To give up my breath
to let the world bend
in my lungs like a branch

To give up my eyes
like scarred marble
to see an entire life in a window
releasing the heaviness of the fog

To give up traveling
to let an old sea reach a new sea

To forget all I gave up
to remember where I come from

to make it speak