I had a dream that I got lost in my hometown.
Streets and avenues that wound around me,
like stems of poisonous flowers,
were dark and alien.
I was in the heart of a city
where I didn’t belong.
Panic streamed down my back in sweaty beads.
I tried to find a way home on a unicycle
that I wasn’t able to ride.
Suffocating, I looked around
hoping to see a friendly face, a familiar face;
but the hostile wrinkled masks that ran past
shed no light on my surroundings.
I tried a mask on myself.
Every line on my face was a gossip that someone else told,
was an impact of someone else’s words.
I walked further on, hoping to escape that madness,
searching for an exit from that lie.
A butterfly flew by, fluttering its wings with a strength of a tornado.
It had only one day to live.
With my dry fingers, I caught it,
and it begged me to set it free,
so I tore it in half
and woke up.
(2016)