I took off my mask and I replaced it with your mouth… Scandalous and reckless, I know! But I couldn’t resist the answer of my prayer, the replacement of the fabric touch with your half eaten skin upon my lips… Now, I returned to uproot with my small teeth whatever is left covering your skeleton… I swallowed each one of your freckles like antidepressant pills hoping to cure my incurable thoughts wearing white dresses wandering around like inmates in the gloomy hall of the sanatorium of my mind… I chewed indolently each one of your wounds trying to taste how bitter your past was… The one on your eyebrow tastes like childhood… tastes like innocence… like the fake tears you shed for your parents’ attention… like your unexplainable desire to grow up… The one marking your hand tastes like self loathing and denial towards me… Dry blood translated as repressed rage and escapism… And after your exhibited stories on your body having been interpreted by my tongue, they followed the stairway right down to my throat… I swallowed every living proof of your past experiences… My stomach aches full of your injured flesh that still remains undigested… My stomach turned into the grave of your unspoken traumas… Your scars are safe inside of me… But your inner child, imprisoned in my uterus, begs for justice for always being defenseless by you… He scratches with his dirty claws my loins to spit him out… But now that’s impossible, since I’ve become the impersonation of your unhealed wounds that you abandoned to feel invincible… to feel like a god with no past neither future… Maimed from your memories… No lessons learned… You stand like a blank canvas, like an unbaptized baby… I turned 10 years older the second I exchanged my youth with the opportunity to walk in your ripped shoes… But the feet to which they belong, run away bare avoiding leaving behind visible traces that I could follow to come find you, to find you, to you, You… - Elena Karra