Still life
On this april day, the trees shed themselves.
The cruelty of seasons
is the only cruelty today.
On this april day something ends for you.
Leaves muffle the stridency
of metaphorical mercy killings.
All day you watch a fruit on the table, perhaps a pear.
This fruit is all you have today.
You carefully watch it ripen to bruises.
The fruit is here but you can’t have it. It becomes
the minuteness whereby
ripening becomes a bruise.
If only you could hang in that breathless moment
the size of a shed eye-lash,
you would’ve suspended the cruelty of seasons,
you would’ve touched
the blind pulp of desire,
you would’ve known once and for all
how we stop loving.
Kapka Kassabova