Elegy For The Dark Girl Of Andalucía Poem by Antonio Giorgio

Each day I awaken to thin blades of light piercing the window, and my soul. I feel the ache of separation from the dark girl in the sun-baked hills of Andalucía.

When I speak of her, my words fall flat— no one can grasp the stolen joy we shared, how each bright moment was so brief, a flash of gold in a gathering storm.

A constant cloud pursued us, a private weather. No shelter on this earth could keep us dry from the downpour of her despair.

Yet in that gloom, you found me. Wrapped in your own black cloak of grief, in our joint pain, a flower blossomed, nourished by the dying embers of your love.

I keep that flower now, a dried epitaph, pressed in my wallet between two Polaroids— a twin reminder of what my heart looks like: it wears your face.

It cries where no one sees, hidden in a dark, warm chamber where I still nurture this pain. The thorns of the flower we cultivated still pierce my flesh, a familiar sting that whispers what our love once meant.

I would endure it all again to stand beside you. Even if your words were knives, I would not leave. I know the cuts were never your intention, only the language of your own hurt.

I love you now. I will love you still, even when I am no more than a ghost in your memory, a faded shape in an old photograph, whose colours bleed away with every glance from the eyes of hungry strangers.