The Face That Carries
by Sara Fernandes
When there is nowhere to go, the only way is backwards.
I stopped by the same cafe of always, this afternoon.
Glass walls, yesterday’s chocolate croissant
And some tea.
It was there I remembered you
because I wanted to think of good things.
I have your card pinned to my cork board.
Your flower dried, lost its last petal and,
when I stand in the middle of the room,
I’m like the beast who couldn’t learn to fall in love,
not even with extra time, not even across the sky, flying,
country to country, not even with my souvenir of being alive
sitting on my dresser, begging something in me
to open, or fall, or do anything that’s like moving.
You said your ex emailed you, saying she still loves you.
I think of you together, on the big bed, and I’m not jealous,
because I love the way you love anything,
the way you reach for things too afraid to reach you first,
but silently begging. I think of you as I think of life –
Abstractly, non-attached, widely grateful
for a feeling, for how your face carries in it
the whole of the city and my warmest summer.
I pieced together the dead flower, today, but
physics says the only way backwards is on the mind.
A consolation: I think of you every winter.
When there is nowhere to go,
you are always where I want to go.
—
Lover of writing, painting, anything-artistic, Sara Fernandes grew up with her feet in a small town near Lisbon, Portugal and her head up in the clouds. At the age of 11, she decided to teach herself the English language and she has been writing about all the unusual things that happen to her ever since.