Doorway (Entrada)

the doorway is dark

framed in hand chiseled caliche

the keystone missing

yet it beckons

as a portal always does

a broad window recalls

the light that once streamed

into this amorphous room

where a tree now grows

where there is barely a floor—

only dust, maybe broken tiles…

where walls and ground

blur into one another

nights

where the boundaries

between darkness

and sound

dissolve 

into deep silence

that can’t be spoken

even a whisper would boom

beyond the wall

unseen people

in rumbling vehicles

of unseen color

keep passing 

on the cobble stones

with their irrational noise

they take composure

away with them...

then there are the days

that explode at dawn

salutes summoning the blessings

of some virgen or saint or other

pyrotechnics suddenly indistinguishable

from gunfire

or mine blasts

by composure I meant

something like harmony,

like a quiet concert

not a blast

but the sigh of a mine

emptied long ago,

the caress of air through

crumbling ruins…

—Lorena Wolfman (2018, 2025)