The Ritual

by Horacio Lobos Luna
(Vallenar, Chile)

On nights like this, when the calm hangs over the city like a broken promise, and the deep silence has fenced our lives with its inescapable routine, I hug (his/her) body, very close, and I whisper beautiful promises to her/him, like I used to. I say words with the cadence of postponed desire, with the urgency that comes from the inevitable need of the skin, unbearable, and say more, love, for ever, sweetness, craziness, only you, God… And while I drawn in the reached pleasure, I turn into myself and the silence of the night returns with its blanket of darkness, leaving over our sweat the dead weight of our lives that have already forgotten themselves, and appears to whisper also, no words, a word, just one, like and echo that repeats itself towards the infinity of that imminent ritual: lie, lie, lie, lie.