Beneath the Tongue

While my mom prayed for my soul,
I kissed “sin” with silent lovers,
Prohibited bodies…
Who saves a crime
Under their tongue?

I love the forbidden,
What hides behind the curtains;
What cannot be breathed freely,
Nor spoken without stuttering
Before the church that blessed me.

We are the uncomfortable rumor–
The family’s sin–
The disappointment of society,
And the word no one dares pronounce;
As if love carried a disease.

That’s what we are…
What love is not.
What sin is in heaven,
What hides in dark streets,
What gets erased before dawn.

I challenged their thoughts,
Broken prayers,
When, with Christ in their hands,
They set fire to my body.

My kisses on her lips,
My scars on her hands,
My hips in her gaze,
My essence, her gender…

Because, while you placed your kisses on my shoulders,
I understood that, even there,
God remains silent.

I am not a wrong woman,
Nor invisible.
I am not an indecisive woman,
Nor fragile.
I am a woman made of shadows;
A woman burning in the opposite direction.

Because when I burned,
I let public shame unravel inside me,
Ribbons soaked in kerosene;
I let the burden of my own essence fall away,
Like the petals of the violets from her garden;
I let go of the fear of existing in my own way.

When your hands unbuttoned my clothes,
You stripped away a sin
I never committed.