Right before sunset
when lights are swimming
like copper-colored fish
near the water’s surface
a bitter desire for freedom used to heat me up.

I ran in the wheelchair
with my hardened hands instead of soles,
keeping my life directly in my palms,
wandering on the alley with the morgue,
swallowing chunks of air
embalmed with chestnut flower.

Everything guffawed around me:
the patients laughing because I was cripple,
the nurses indignant because I vomited in my bed,
the children from the pediatric section,
the empty pots cast to the ground at the refectory,
the jars on the upper morgue window
filled with didactic brain substance...
all of them were yellow of laughter
like sick leaves.

I turned the wheels faster and faster,
always on the alleys’ center,
bending for some leaf
like a palm with contorted fingers
under the holy sun.

I had forgotten to cry,
I had forgotten I never laughed
wholeheartedly.