A Life Inverse

My life circled round

every side a destination  

—I’m a budding stone

the sky at my fingertips

I exist beyond the silence

inside voices and their words

inside voiceless words

And inside these insides where blue arouses the clitoris

as my dead pass teeming with sky

to the wonder of the earth floor dizzy with birds.

A floor within the swoon?

it is me passing by, it is we the budding dead

the sky within another sky

to the wonder of two eyes kaleido-scoping the horizon:

I have skies at my fingertips

and I am not short of ground:

My life, a circle route:

everywhere destination!

Originally published in the April 2019 issue of Words Without Borders. "A Life Inverse" © Rogério Manjate. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2019 by Sandra Tamele and Eric M. B. Becker. All rights reserved.