After the Evening Movie.

Lleshanaku, Luljeta

After the Evening Movie

   Lulling in the curiosity of an evening movie,
   the four of us look like pieces broken off a relic,
   small and large fragments
   caught in an archaeologist's sieve.

   Ribs, elbows, shoulders and knees
   lean freely against one another.
   The illusion, flickering, reflects
   off the screen onto the ionic architecture of our flesh.

   "We might have been happy," you utter
   with the same compassionate tone
   you use when talking about the dog tied to a pole in the courtyard
   on that fearful night of lightning.
   We turn out the lights, get ready for bed,
   our heads glowing like lemons in the dark,
   sour and dissatisfied.

   "We could ... if ..."

   We hide beneath a suffocating embrace
   simply to avoid speaking,
   simply because we fear that we might have to tell a story,
   a story whose ending we don't yet know,
   because we no longer hear barking in the courtyard.

   Clay turns on its wheel
   unable to realize
   that it is history itself,
   that same story
   told over and over in countless ways.