Three sonnets by Lucía Hernández Rodríguez

 

Lucía Hernández Rodríguez

NOT ME

 

To whom, for sure, it does concern: I’ve lived

for looks that never came and words that were

not even uttered, which a throat deceived;

by silence cut, it bleeds. Your hands, so bare

yet dressed in thorns that suit you well. Then go

ahead: pretend your claws, your touch, will stain

my lips. Then stir the ground and take it slow:

do bury, wound me deeper: drink from veins

from which I’ve drunk and gotten drunk and just

because I thought they were as mine as yours;

—my fault, my dear— then tear me, make me dust,

because I always was as ours as yours.

And then my hands, so bare, so ripped, so numb,

won't catch your tears: I swear I’ve cried them plumb.

 

 

Like a stain on the whole

 

Because I learnt that, maybe, hands aren’t meant

to hold his flakes unless I want them flayed

or, what’s —again— that thing I took for spears,

if not a whole October dressed in "may"?

If noon’s not noon below his chest,

will time betray my word and words of faith?

Will poems write themselves and bless

that skin I never sailed nor torn or drain?

Will solemn mouths erase what’s left for good

instead of letting tongues incise yet try

to heal an earthy drop of soul I would

have bound, if you had cared, in "mights”?

If love’s not love, what is? A homeless door

I built from me; but I’m not me if yours.

 

 

Implied, as he shall know

 

I wandered back to trails of thorns all bare

on spirit; bold, not knowing fourth is just

as strong as third, or first fervours that tear

that knot I thought to be sincere. But must

I blame her silent nights or soggy feet?

Such wrench ignites and wounds of concrete gone

by; went by eyes which burnt the sun in teal

I changed for you: my reddish scars of dawn,

because you yelled that dusk was much as pale

as dull. Shan’t I from scratch another sun

construct? New shoes and arms, and tongues and tales?

Can’t I rewrite my rhyme? Am I so blank?

Would I portray myself as stains of veins

you wrote me from? If only care weren’t banes.

September 2026