Today I got to my apartment and as I walked through the door,
my lava lamp broke.
Against the floor, it split
into more than ten pieces—into edges
and curves and tips, far less forgiving
than they seemed.
After the yowl of glass, after its dance on the bare tiles
of the basement where I sleep,
came the spread of a puddle
I could have seen my reflection in.
But I didn’t.
A puddle, two orange balls, two rubber spheres,
a bottle cap. My lava lamp was
A bottle.
But none of that matters.
The orange of my room is gone.
The orange of home and its reflection on the walls
and on the windows—gone. It vanished
along with the silence of the world.
It had been with me for three years,
even here, in this basement where I sleep.
It was with me
when hundreds of crows visited my window,
and when I found a spider catching insects hidden behind the memory
of love.
And now my room ignites with absent silhouettes,
and crystalline visions of what once was,
when I still knew no metaphors for time
other than the river and the immensity of the sea.
But there is an incongruence before this lava lamp,
and before the now fading trace of its orange glow:
Its fire doesn’t burn or bruise
like fire usually does.
My lava lamp has shattered into more than ten pieces
and I, tranquil, watch its symbol turn
into a specter without blades. A specter
trying to pierce the stillness of the moment
but miserably, with no dignity
or melancholic power.
There is already too much melancholy, by itself
in the roots of my body.
All things must come to their end,
must perish, be destroyed,
cease to exist; all things
must dig the grave of novelty.
Everything breaks. Everything has a slot
reserved underground. Everything will become
a trace of itself.
Every trace awaits.
The question is: How?
My lava lamp broke and I thought:
maybe it was time,
maybe it was time to let go,
to free myself from this basement that is home
only for a few years, and will then return
to the great void from which
all things come. That is where
my lamp is now.
That is where it is, and from there
it glows.
I thought: maybe at last,
now yes, I can pick up the broken pieces,
gather my own mess. Maybe I
give in to the temptation
of glimpsing a metaphor
for the destruction of things:
The orange trace slowly dissolves
and is absorbed by the white paper towel.
— Diego Del Aguila
Illustration by Jacinda Webber.
