Sometimes you disappear,
then return in that quiet red glow
that seems to reopen something
left too long beneath the surface.
And every time I look at you,
something inside me gives way slightly,
a melancholy that does not wound
but makes more space within me.

Tonight I imagined you near.
Your light seemed to listen.
It carried the delicacy of words left unspoken,
the kind that grow more deeply in silence
than they ever could in speech.

To walk beneath you
is to carry a presence that has no weight,
something that does not touch
and yet remains.
Sometimes I think it belongs to you,
other times that it is a part of me
only you know how to illuminate
without forcing it into view.

When you are gone,
the sky becomes a more empty room.
I search for the place you will return from,
not out of certainty,
but because of that quiet trust
we reserve only for things
that continue coming back.

And when you arrive,
you settle over my clouds.
You do not dissolve them,
you move gently through them.
And in that narrow opening,
I feel something begin to stir,
like a sorrow that does not ask to disappear
but only to be seen
with the same calmness you carry.

You promise nothing,
and yet you remain.
Every night different,
and somehow the same
for the one who continues waiting for you.

And perhaps that is what consoles:
not the light itself,
but the fact that something
can move through the dark
without needing to overcome it.


Note

There are nights when the moon feels less like a distant object and more like a quiet form of presence, something that does not remove sorrow but allows it to exist without closing around us.

This piece was written from that feeling: the sense that certain forms of melancholy do not ask to disappear, only to be carried gently enough to let us keep moving through them.

— Antonio Castellaneta

There are surfaces that no longer recognize us,
gestures that brush against things without touching them,
words that arrive carrying a faint shadow.
Recognition becomes a slow movement,
a return unable to find ground beneath itself,
left suspended
like a presence that has not yet learned
where to come to rest.

In the inner regions of thought,
something moves without a name.
It leaves no visible mark,
yet alters the temperature of the day,
like a gradual cooling
that goes unnoticed at first.
There, what once felt natural
loses its outline,
recedes toward the edges of the visible,
as though it no longer recognizes
where it belongs.

Truth withdraws.
It remains somewhere that cannot quite be reached,
like a light that no longer illuminates
yet continues to pulse
behind a layer that will not open.

The world tilts slightly out of itself.
Night arrives before darkness,
and light, when it passes through,
does not clarify:
it breaks into fragments that offer no direction.
So we move forward by contact alone,
between orientations that fade
and defenses that remain awake
even when no one calls,
as though the body still remembers
an ancient alarm.

Words tighten.
Gestures carry a faint trembling.
Smiles pass across the face dimmed at the edges,
as if they had to move through an air
that no longer recognizes the body.

Inside, an accumulation of voices
unable to settle anywhere.
An echo brushing against the place
where one’s own voice should begin,
leaving it untouched,
yet somehow farther away.

And still, beneath all of this,
something remains.
A core that does not yield.
A faceless question
that continues to pulse.
A call with no direction
that nevertheless persists.


Note
There are moments when reality no longer breaks apart visibly, yet something within it begins to withdraw.
Not dramatically. Not all at once.
Just enough for the familiar to lose its certainty, for gestures to hesitate, for thought itself to feel slightly displaced from its own center.

This piece was written from that quiet recession, from the feeling that beneath the visible world, something continues to move without fully revealing itself.

— Antonio Castellaneta

I don’t want to hear empty words.
I want to feel them arrive,
like footsteps emerging from fog,
entering quietly,
without asking for space,
recognizable to whatever in us
still remains open
even after everything else has begun to withdraw.

There are things that do not reveal themselves right away.
They move through the day
without ever becoming fully graspable.
Some words remain at the edges,
not because they are absent,
but because they still carry something
that has not yet managed
to separate itself
from what it has passed through.

They hold the silence of things
left too long exposed to daylight.
They do not ask to be saved,
and yet something inside them trembles
when the world moves too quickly.
It takes very little:
a shift in the air,
a gesture unaware of itself,
and they seem to drift slightly
toward that place where things
have not yet decided
whether to remain
or disappear.

I do not want words without passage,
words that close the moment they are spoken.
I want to feel them still holding something,
as though they had passed through something
without keeping its noise.
There are words that continue to carry warmth
even when no one gathers them,
as if they were still waiting
to be recognized
not for what they say,
but for what they leave open.

I want words that do not arrive to explain.
Words able to remain near
what does not take shape immediately,
what changes slowly
within the breath,
within the way a presence
continues moving through things
even after it has passed.

Words to keep close,
not to protect them,
but not to lose completely
what, through them,
is still searching
for a voice.

And finally, words that are not merely words,
but a subtle threshold
between what remains
and what slowly begins to recede,
while the day withdraws
and something, in the silence,
continues
to breathe.


Note
There are words that remain near us long after they are spoken.
Not because of what they say, but because of what they continue to hold in silence.

Some seem to pass through the world without closing completely, as if something within them were still listening, still waiting, still breathing quietly beneath the surface.

This piece was written from that threshold.

— Antonio Castellaneta

It comes like this,
in silence,
like something that recognizes
the innermost rooms
of who we are,
the ones we don’t open often,
the ones that hold a scent,
a gesture,
a fragment that won’t let go,
that remains suspended
like a thin thread.

Sometimes we stay.
Without knowing what for.
With that breath that falters slightly,
that slips across the skin,
that brushes the chest
like a thought that never quite forms
and yet insists,
lingers,
extends itself.

There is a need that finds no voice,
a presence that is missing
even while everything continues.
A part that keeps searching,
calling,
remaining in quiet listening,
as if a distant sound
might still come closer,
as if something, somewhere,
were about to return.

In the place where we pause,
where the breath slows,
where something holds
without telling us why,
without asking anything,
simply remaining,
like an echo that does not fade.


Note

Some things don’t arrive to be understood.
They arrive to be felt… and to stay,
without asking for a name.

— Antonio Castellaneta

Melancholy softens the edges,
like a memory you can’t tell anymore
whether it belongs to you or someone else.
You don’t really know what you’re feeling,
only that it weighs on you, without explaining itself,
a quiet weight that stays in the same place,
like a word that won’t come out.

Melancholy doesn’t arrive,
it’s already there, without sound, without hurry,
and it stays.
It stays like a fogged-up pane
you don’t know whether to wipe clean
or leave as it is,
because in that blur
you recognize yourself more than in clarity.

You reach toward the reflection,
as if to see whether it’s really you
or something that only resembles you.
You stand still,
not knowing what to do,
as if every movement were already out of place,
as if the world had stopped waiting for you.

And there something opens,
without really changing,
without declaring itself, without closing.
It’s like seeing yourself from the outside
and not fully recognizing who you are,
yet not being able to look away.

So you close your eyes,
not to escape
but to remove the rest.
When you open them again,
the day is still there,
unchanged, but no longer against you.

You breathe,
and for now, that is enough,
like something holding
without needing to be seen.

It isn’t a return,
it isn’t a clear passage,
it’s a slow crossing that keeps holding.

And only later do you understand
you weren’t meant to get out of it:

you had to go through it,
without trying to avoid it.


Note

I didn’t notice when it began.
There was no clear moment, no break.

Nothing really changed.
Things just kept going, but without me in them.

And still, something stayed.
Not visible, not asking to be understood—
just there.

I thought I needed to get out of it.
But I didn’t.

I had to go through it.

— Antonio Castellaneta

Sometimes life tightens without warning,
like a path that closes while you’re already inside it.
You don’t remember when you stopped choosing,
only that you find yourself there, with less space and less direction.

There are days when the weight isn’t even the dark,
but the sense that nothing is really moving.
You stay still longer than you should,
as if time itself had stopped passing through you.

Then, without any clear beginning,
you realize something never left.
You don’t know when it stayed,
or what still holds it in place,
but it’s there, and it keeps holding.

It doesn’t change what weighs on you,
it doesn’t truly make it lighter,
but it keeps it open,
as if it could no longer fully close.

You can’t say where or how,
but you’re no longer still in the same way:
something, however small,
has already begun to shift you.

And staying there, without really understanding,
you begin to see it never stopped,
that beneath what feels unmoving
something has kept going.

It made no sound,
it didn’t show itself,
but it remained,
like a presence that doesn’t give in
even when you stop looking for it.

And then you understand
the day was never finished:

it was only continuing elsewhere,
outside the place you were looking from.


Note

I thought I had stopped.
Not suddenly, but over time,
without noticing when.

Nothing was really changing.
Not outside, not inside.

And yet, something hadn’t left.
It wasn’t doing anything visible,
but it was still there.

Not pushing, not asking,
just holding.

— Antonio Castellaneta

I remain near what shows itself
without trying to possess it.

I remain near what withdraws
without reducing it to chance.

Every interpretation is a threshold,
not a dwelling.

Every hypothesis is a passage of the mind
before a reality that exceeds it.

Perhaps what we call light
is the name we give to what we do not understand.

Or perhaps it is only a provisional name
for what exists
before we learn to see it.

I do not affirm.
I do not deny.

I observe.


Note

I used to think that understanding meant naming.
Now it feels closer to staying.

Not to define what appears,
but to remain near it
without closing it.

— Antonio Castellaneta

Sometimes you don’t notice it right away.
Beauty doesn’t disappear—
it slowly withdraws,
like a light that doesn’t want to leave
but no longer knows where to settle.

What remains is the memory
of who you once were,
and it doesn’t always hurt.
Sometimes it’s just something still lit,
even as everything else begins to dim.

There are words that try
to hold on to what passes:
a gesture,
a face,
something that doesn’t yet have a name
but still brushes against you,
like a hand you no longer remember
having held.

Not everything allows itself to be seen.
And yet something keeps moving within,
without sound,
without asking anything.
It’s a small movement,
but it stays.

There is a part of us
that recognizes change
before we understand it.
It doesn’t speak,
it doesn’t show itself,
but it observes everything
with a calm we don’t know how to imitate.

When you stop being afraid
of what you may no longer be,
something opens.
Not a wide opening—
just a thread of space
enough to let breath pass through.

Thoughts begin to take shape on their own,
as if they had been waiting there
for you to return to them.

And then you understand
that nothing is truly lost.
It doesn’t dissolve,
it doesn’t vanish.
It has only changed
the way it stays.


Note

I thought I was losing something,
not all at once, just slowly, without a clear moment.

But it didn’t feel like loss.
It felt like something shifting,
quietly, without asking to be understood.

Some things don’t leave.
They simply stop appearing in the same way.

— Antonio Castellaneta

I walk among the shadows of myself.  
In every shadow, your name insists.

If one day I no longer had you,  
my doubts would undo me,  
and hope would become  
a vessel against the wind,  
swollen with promises that still tremble.

The wind tries to pull me elsewhere,  
but I remain  
in the thought of you,  
a root that does not yield to the storm.

What would become of me  
with this crowd of thoughts  
that never finds a ground  
where it can truly rest?

I do not seek refuge.  
I need something that moves through me,  
that shakes me to the core,  
that makes real  
the most naked part of me, undefended.

I want to feel my heart in my hands,  
to understand how deeply  
you live within me  
when everything else falls silent.

To feel you living in me,  
until the exact point  
where my life  
recognizes itself  
and no longer withdraws.

My life does not separate from you,  
just as the sea never stops  
seeking its shore,  
even when the shore does not answer.

Even if I tried to flee,  
I would always return  
to where you breathe,  
before I can even call your name.

You are the echo that fills me,  
the absence that holds me.

Let me sink into your silence,  
where every absence  
continues to call  
without ever consuming itself.


Note

I thought what was returning was the past.  
It wasn’t.

It was the part of me I had never fully seen,  
walking back without asking,  
not to be fixed, not to be understood,  
but simply to be met.

— Antonio Castellaneta

Not everything needs to be followed.
But some things return.

Some memories knock softly, as if afraid to wound,
while others throw open the silence with the force of an unexpected wind.

For a long time, I have walked beside what I let go of,
and yet, at times, I feel a step falling in beside my own.

It is not yours. It is my step from then,
the one that trembled at the threshold, that did not know how to stay
or how to leave.

The shadows I carry no longer ask to be overcome.
They ask to be seen—like a crack in the night
that lets a thin light through, a blade that does not comfort but reveals.

And when I look at them without fear, they open,
and in that opening a breath returns I thought was lost.

Perhaps it wasn’t me you were missing.
Perhaps I was missing myself.

Some presences do not return, but gestures return, heartbeats return,
the possibility of being whole returns even without what we have lost.

So, standing before the same half-open door,
I no longer try to close it or to walk through it.

I pause. I let the light reach me.

And in the returning I still feel the tremor of what I never knew how to say,
the weight of the steps I missed, the voice I held back for fear of hurting.

Nothing is truly finished: what once broke still carries a rhythm,
a pulse that insists in rooms I once believed were empty.

Now I listen to the step that arises,
the one that does not fear the threshold nor the light that filters through
like a memory that burns and illuminates at once.

If a part of me lingers behind, it is not to hold onto the past,
but to remind me that every crack is a beginning,
every shadow a promise of a new form.

And so I walk. Not toward what I was, not toward what I have lost,
but within what is opening.

And in this movement the door remains half-open:
no longer a wound, but a possibility.

And I return.

Note 

I thought what was returning was the past.
It wasn’t.
It was the part of me I had never fully seen,
walking back without asking—
not to be fixed, not to be understood,
but simply to be met.

— Antonio Castellaneta

Nothing returns the same.

I let silence cover the words I did not have the courage to speak —
fragile truths trembling between the heart and the mouth.

I watched you fade as the stars ceased to shine,
and I began to feel unworthy of their light,
and of yours.

The shadow that lives in me reaches without warning,
like mist slipping into the cracks of the soul.
And that mist is the crack:
a veil that blinds and confuses,
returning the sound of your name
like an echo that refuses to fade.

If heaven does not ask forgiveness
for what I did not know how to do,
for the steps I never took toward you,
nothing can be made whole again.

Deep in the heart a quiet voice endures.
It asks for light, but the day remains suspended.
It asks for time, but haste devours.
It asks for the courage to be.

And I remain.

Like a root that does not yield to stone,
like a glimmer resisting the dark,
I remain in the trembling of unsaid words,
in the heartbeat that still seeks you,
in the breath that moves through your memory.

A door remains ajar.

Through its narrow opening, a light filters —
not to shine,
but to remind me who I am,
and who I was with you.

And I am still here.

Note

Some things do not heal by closing.

They remain open,
not as wounds,
but as places where meaning continues to pass.

Perhaps what stays ajar
is not what could not end,

but what was never meant
to be sealed.

— Antonio Castellaneta

I used to think recognizing someone meant finding something identical to myself.

Then I came to understand that sameness is a poverty of recognition.

Two leaves on the same tree are not identical. They do not carry the same veining. They do not receive light in the same way. They do not tremble in the same wind. And yet they belong to the same mother.

Perhaps affinity is not resemblance.

It is belonging without fusion. A creative act of uniqueness, a singularity that does not repeat across the arc of existence.

For a long time, we believed that truly meeting another meant finding confirmation of ourselves.

But perhaps encounter begins when the other does not repeat us, and life becomes more precious when difference does not slide into separate individuality.

When otherness remains, water permeates the leaves and senses the scent of earth among people.

And perhaps it is precisely there that a thought begins to flower, one we could not have had alone: that recognition is not born where we find what resembles us, but where a difference reveals a root we did not know we shared.

Two leaves do not seek one another in order to be the same.

They meet because the wind, passing through, places them in relation.

Perhaps it is not the identical that joins us, but what, while remaining distinct, allows a deeper origin to emerge between us.

Then the other is not a mirror, but the branch that shifted the light.

We are not two equal forms.

We are two differences born of the same root, two different ways the sap has found a voice.

This is enough.

Perhaps it is the only thing that can be enough.

Because if we were identical, we would be only reflection.

Not encounter.

And encounter, when it happens, does not ask for fusion, but for a listening that lets the wind pass through, a gaze that does not close off the light, a belonging that has root, not chain.

So life passes through the leaves, and in that passing returns us to the earth that sustains us both, without ever asking us to be the same.


Note

Two leaves do not become one to belong to the same tree.

— Antonio Castellaneta

I can write the most beautiful words in the world, I know.
Words that vibrate, that touch, that brush the edge of the sky.
But if they don’t find eyes willing to see them,
they remain suspended, light,
like clothes without a body, hanging in the wind.

I can speak of light, and I have done it many times,
but if it warms no one,
if it doesn’t illuminate at least one face,
then that light is not life:
it is only a memory without a heart.

We believed in sounds, in mantras,
in perfect sentences that promised salvation.
But words do not save unless they get dirty,
unless they descend into the earth with us.
A true word must become flesh,
must live the pain it speaks of,
otherwise it is only an echo that never returns.

I no longer need promises,
nor skies to reach.
I want the earth to answer me,
this ground I walk every day,
that listens without speaking
and feels more than we do.

I want a dream that walks,
that stumbles, that rises again,
that bleeds when it falls.
A dream that does not pretend to be light,
but becomes light out of necessity,
out of survival.

We have become poets of nothing,
prophets of the unlived,
speaking of freedom
without ever crossing it.
We have forgotten how to dream,
because we are afraid of being free.

I am no longer looking for meaning.
I am looking for contact.
For the skin of things,
for a voice that does not lie,
for eyes that remain.

I do not believe in new age promises,
I do not believe in ready-made paradises.
I believe in those who stay,
in those who look at pain and do not move away,
in those who embrace without asking how you are.

Words, if they do not incarnate,
die beautifully.
But if they get dirty,
if they tremble,
if they fall and rise again with us,
then they become real.

And in that rough truth,
without glory,
without incense,
I feel only a pulse.
Maybe it is not God,
maybe it is not even mine.
It is life insisting,
rising again even when it has no reason,
continuing to speak in a tired voice,
but a true one.

And then I understand that no miracles are needed,
no perfect words.
It is enough to remain.
To remain within the earth that holds us,
within the silence that recognizes us,
within that breath that knows
that everything passes,
but not the love that moves it.


Note

If this reaches you, stay.
Not for the words —
but for what they touch.

— Antonio Castellaneta

This is not a reflection on love,
but a listening to what begins to move before it is named.

Every love that is born is born twice:
once in the heart of the one who loves,
once in the world that recognizes it.

When one breath meets another,
the universe quietly widens by a single beat.
Stars do not fall. They draw closer.
Time does not run. It remembers.

There are no boundaries between what pulses and what is still.
Everything that lives is already memory of the origin.

This does not ask for prayer.
It asks for presence.

It asks that every gesture be offered with gentleness,
that every gaze become a bridge,
that every silence be listening.

The love that is born is neither gift nor conquest,
but return.

It is the circle that closes only to open again.
It is the river that flows within every name,
remembering that all is one,
and that one is never alone.

And yet, at times, we forget even as it happens.

If you come to stillness,
the world comes to stillness with you.
If you love again, even light will love.

Because love is what holds together
what no language can say.

And when you forget,
something remembers you.

It speaks through the voice of the one who sleeps beside you,
through the song of trees,
through the scent of bread and rain.

Because what is true does not end.
It becomes an echo that returns.

So ends the first song of love,
not as an ending,
but as a continuous beginning.

Each time two hearts recognize one another,
the world is renewed,
and the point that pulses begins to beat again.

The love that is born is the hidden law of the sky:
a living memory,
a voice no one can silence,
the purest form of creation.


Note

There are things we understand clearly,
and still forget as they are happening.

This does not speak of love as an idea,
but as something that moves through us,
often without being recognized.

Not something to reach,
but something already taking place.


If this stayed with you, you can remain here.

— Antonio Castellaneta

Not the voice.

Before the voice, there is something
that does not ask to be heard.
It does not rise. It simply remains.
And in that remaining, something begins to breathe.

I am what pulses as I fall silent,
a quiet movement crossing the dark
without asking to be seen.

My voice is born there,
where light does not reach,
and yet it finds a way
to touch those who still know how to listen.

I whisper what the day forgets,
I trace faces that no longer belong to time,
and in the silence that remains
what does not ask to be spoken remains with me.

I do not seek to shine,
nor to impose myself,
but to be recognized
at the point where something within opens.

You brush against me,
and sometimes pass beyond,
as if what remains were never enough.

And yet I return.
I rest upon tired thoughts,
I move through them without holding,
and remain whole
in every moment that lets itself be found.

In the steps of others,
in the light that shifts without warning,
I am there without needing to be named,
like something that accompanies
without asking to stay.

Give me eyes I do not have,
but that can see
the hidden breath within things,
what does not appear
yet holds everything together.

Call me by the name that reveals me,
not the one that describes me,
because what I am
cannot be contained.

I am a voice in this world,
yet I hold nothing,
do not cling,
do not ask to stay.

I remain
like a pulse that continues,
even when no one listens.

Now I have the breath that belongs to me,
I feel it moving through me
even when I cannot see it.

For now,
this remaining is enough.
A presence that does not pass.

And perhaps
it is already everything.


NOTE

Not something to follow,
but something that remains
when the voice no longer needs to be heard.

— Antonio Castellaneta

In the time of the heart, there is a moment that returns each day,
when your eyes meet mine,
and it is never the same,
even though time has learned us by heart.

In your gaze, everything we have lived passes through,
and something that cannot be spoken
keeps coming toward me.

The world rushes, pulls us apart, distracts us,
but what we are does not break.
It remains in the hours of daily life,
in the pauses between one thing and the next,
in an embrace that does not need words.

Your silence is full.
Your presence does not add. It brings me back.

Our love does not shine to be seen,
but to let what is already there come into view.

And as time carries us forward,
I do not choose you each day.
I find you again
in the same place
where we were never separate.

There is nothing to add
to what continues to remain.

A touch, a laugh,
what holds us,
even when we cannot hold each other.

At the heart of this love
there is no search, only recognition.

There is no day without you,
no hour that does not speak of us.

Our love is what remains
when time stops measuring.

And in that place,
I love you.
Without measure.


Note

Not something to hold,
but something that remains
closer than we think.

— Antonio Castellaneta

Silence is never empty: it is a dwelling of names that time has stopped speaking.

Someone walks where words no longer hold. Their skin carries what cannot be said, and their eyes do not look away.

Memory does not return gently. It comes without asking, and what it touches does not remain the same.

At every step, something opens that cannot be shared. Each pause burns without showing where.

Time no longer holds order. What was lived folds back into itself and no longer asks to be understood.

And yet, something continues. Not as a voice, but as what remains when the voice is gone.


Note

Not something to follow, but something that remains as the voice dissolves into breath.

Antonio Castellaneta

Do not look for me in the lines,
nor in the form that gave rise to them.

No longer a word,
but the interval between two breaths.
What remains
when silence becomes prayer
and absence is no longer feared.

I wrote to empty myself,
to become a space that could be lived in,
so that something vaster
might speak to you.

My voice left to dissolve
into the ancient pulse of what is true,
which does not ask to be understood,
only to be received.

No longer “I.”

A voice that whispers
within your thoughts,
without origin.

The listening that comes before.

The other side.

If you still feel me,
it is because you are returning
to where I, too, left light.

And if one day
these words no longer carry sound,
know this:
they have not disappeared.
They have become breath.


Note

Not something to follow,
but something that remains
as the voice dissolves into breath.


Antonio Castellaneta

Not everything that is saved is already safe.

Ares came from the street.
His body spoke before his eyes:
bones pressing through,
skin that remembered every blow,
a step that feared the one that followed.

He had learned the world
through hunger,
through cold that settles in the bones
and does not leave,
through hands that do not touch
but push away.

When we found him,
he did not look at anyone.
It was the gesture of one who has learned
that a gaze can wound
more than a hand.

In his trembling
there was the whole story:
nights without shelter,
closed doors,
solitude becoming skin.

Only later,
in the quiet of the house,
something loosened.
Not trust,
not peace:
only a shorter breath,
as if pain
had allowed a margin.

Now he lives with us,
but the wound does not dissolve.
He carries it in his eyes:
two dark wells
where the past remains,
where the field still holds
lost steps,
blows received,
nights without a name.


Note

Some wounds remain.

Not as pain,
but as a way of staying.

Some things don’t leave. We learn how to stay.

I am a “four-coin poet.”
It makes me smile. It does not diminish me;
someone may take offense,
but it does not matter:
I bow and remain,
with the unsteady grace of a drunk
walking the street, gathering
scattered verses that have nowhere to stay.

I am a beggar of life,
with four coins in my pocket,
four small weights through which to understand and sense
a world that has lost its clarity:

one coin for forgiveness,
that does not dissolve
and stays between the fingers;

one coin for understanding,
that arrives too late,
when it is no longer needed;

one coin for suffering,
that does not leave the body,
even when everything else falls silent;

one coin for love,
that does not go away,
even when it is over.

I search, and in searching something returns;
even with eyes closed,
something remains, insisting:
lost verses,
rising again in forgotten corners,
in torn feelings,
worn down by gestures and absences,
dragged and left behind without care,
and yet once alive,
still able to remain.

Do not be afraid to gather them:
they do not wound the soul,
they only ask for courage.
They waver, yes, frightened,
yet still carry
the stubborn desire to return home.

Scattered verses, found again, brought back
by a “four-coin poet”
who searches for them
among what remains of ordinary life.

A “four-coin poet.”

Like a beggar rummaging
through the ruins of a noble thought,
fallen and forgotten.

Among what lingers at the margins,
where words lose their names
and settle on the skin
like dust no one gathers.

He finds them there,
not whole,
not safe,

yet still able
to remain.

His voice begins there,
in being seen without being recognized,
in a misunderstanding that cannot name passion.
And in that distance
something rekindles,
not as redemption,
but as the persistence
of what does not go out.

And it remains.


Note

Some things remain, even when they no longer hold value.

Not as weight,
but as a way of staying.

Perhaps four coins,
not to be spent,
but to be recognized.

— Antonio Castellaneta