POEM FOR JOHANA - 2010

There is a poem in my head for you,

From a long way back.

I remember you Johana

in your little cane house

and your four children

playing in the mud.

Pretty, the colour of honey

Woman/child

The contraband between your breasts

And your smile giving us light.

Johana in your bicycle

bringing me breakfast

of fried plantains and rum.

Friend jumping for joy

in the puddles of your yard

on seeing me arrive

When you, he, I, all

Were healthier, prettier, better.

In a world where one is worth

What the last cent,

I know I counted on you.

Johana always to my rescue;

That day for the escape

you lend me your sandals,

another day you came to fetch me

in a cab.

My only friend Johana.

The horror of your instant death

an afternoon of  Easter Saturday

Pa! Pa!...papapapapapa!

Pa! Pa! Papapapapapapa!

I Heard from my house

Nine millimetre discharge

 resounded in the distance

and at that moment someone fell

How to imagine it was you,

 with your pretty face, oh Johana!

I miss you, your memory smarts in the distance.

I see your mother sitting

In a corner of the market,

Her round figure

And her skin darker than yours of honey.

Her effervescent smile and her red mouth today faded,

Nodding off over her basket

from exhaustion, from sorrow

from so much frying fish       

Oh! From so much burying corpses.

your father, her mother

And now the unthinkable, you, Johana.

From the other side of the ocean

I am sending you this homage

I hope that you will receive it

There where there is no money,

drugs or semiautomatics.

And I ask myself

I don’t dare...

Johana, did we all kill you?

@Paloma Zozaya Gorostiza