Vulnus

I had a body before the night it rained. It was a house of flesh with lit windows, a small temple where the soul rested its brow on the skin. Then someone entered my most sacred darkness and broke the bread of my light. They came with stones thrown by absent hands, with sentences born in the dark, with the hatred of those who wound from afar and left the weight of the blood to others. The bruises faded with the mercy of color. The bites left the skin with the tired gait of now-sated beasts. Since then I have learned that the body can become a foreign room, a bed full of nails, a rose closed by the frost in the wrong month. I have learned that a word can cause a bruise, that a sentence can leave a scar, that a mockery can chew longer. But inside remained an aisle of shadow, hidden in a wounded church. The skin knows anguish before the mouth, before thought, before forgiveness. It knows the smell of fear, that cold iron that enters the mind and remains seated like a sick king. It knows the poison of the voice, the blow of the sentence, the blade of another's laughter, the bite of the anonymous one who throws mud and calls their hunger truth. I carried the silence on my shoulders like a black cloak. People saw my face and said: you are saved. But salvation is sometimes only a closed door behind which the room is still burning. Then came the fragrance. It came without noise, as certain graces come after ruin. It entered the wound with hands of air, with a blood of light, with a dark patience. It told me: your skin is yours. It told me: your soul still has a name. And so I rose with the iron, the smoke, the leather, the ash, the burnt rose, the bitter resin that consoles only those who have crossed the fire upon me. I rose with the black ink of the received words having become a seal on the skin. I rose with the stones gathered one by one and fused into a crown. Vulnus. Thus I called my wound and it became power. Thus I called my name with a sharper light. Thus I called my body with its strength. Thus I called the beauty born from my abyss: a liquid armor, a fierce light, a fragrance that rises from the ashes and says to the world: I am mine. I am still mine. I lost blood, but I found gold. I have known the shadow, but now I rule my night.

Vulnus tells what remains after the pain: the body that returns to belong to the one who inhabits it, the words that from wounds become scars and the stones received that are gathered and transformed into a crown. It is a rebirth without innocence, made of shadow, fire and awareness. A liquid armor on the skin, to say only one thing: I am mine.

People saw my face and said: you are saved. I lost blood, but I found gold.