Numantia

 

Lucía Hernández Rodríguez

No one fights unless there’s something

to fight for. Thus

no war is crueler than one’s own

—bland poetry, for a start—.

When mind and desire collide

and spit every instance of spark;

stark ash, She burns up those walls

I never meant to trace on our plan

—never meant to be ours, at all—.

 

Gold-dipped steel is still, by all means,

Cheap, and lack of elegance buys nothing

but a pity glance at lack of gleam;

at lack of twinkle on my opaque glass,

fragile as the voice with which I yearn it back.

Turns out stars don’t last that much.

 

Swords against missiles and leather vest

against damp, porcelain grenades.

 

But it’s no use destroying ruins

nor painting never-ending bloody layers

on a ripped canvas no longer hanging

inside our home.

That in which I never meant to melt

—never meant to share one bed, at all—.

 

Toss your head and hear me drop:

hear me fall apart and turn into dust.

Hear, then, how swallowed my dust

Inside ends up your misty hurricane,

which, in the end, I

never meant to make mine.

 

For good, war was never meant to end.

 

Meet my lifeless corpse and, mocking woe,

whisper that you never meant to take me,

at all.

October 2025