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Translucid, in Portuguese and English, by Lúcia Leão

11/16/2023

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Translucid, photography by Lúcia Leão (USA, b. Brazil) contemporary

Translúcido

Escrevo de memória o que está por vir. Um olho de vidro de Murano preto, o outro em movimento  sob o cabelo estirado. São brincos. Escuros de poças vivas e secas que ladeiam o meu rosto. E agora o seu, quando experimento decorar esse momento infantil, um pêndulo preso só com as mãos, criando em você um pirata para a expedição afinal.

É um horário da manhã como aqueles que se prendem à família em ossos. Frescor adquirido por séculos de evolução pelos nossos sobrenomes aleatórios. 

Há muitas formas de reduzir lembranças a um fino aroma de restaurante, mas hoje é o caldo que tem na falta de nobreza uma absoluta dignidade. 

Com as mãos miúdas você pega o sinuoso e mínimo metal que prende a pedra, tenta furar a língua com a ponta, como argola. A sua experimentação rebola a história da moda e a sua risada rivaliza com os mitos que esqueci que aprendi. 

Você pega um alfinete de lapela com uma pérola incrustada e coloca na beira da manta do filho que sai da maternidade e que logo irá para a escola. É um passatempo a passagem — fogo-metal-vidro-sorte. Não sei se beijo sua testa de criança ou vejo pela última vez seu rosto sobre a minha morte. Há uma nesga de verde entre as hipóteses.  

​**

Translucid
​
I write from memory what is yet to come. One black Murano glass eye, the other moving under the stretched hair. They are earrings. Dark puddles alive and dry that side my face. And now yours, when I experiment decorating this childish moment, a pendulum held only by the hands, turning you into a pirate for the expedition, at last.
 
It is a time in the morning like those that bond families to bones. A freshness acquired during centuries of evolution through our last names randomly assigned.
 
There are many ways to reduce memories to an upscale restaurant aroma, but today it is the broth that borrows from the absent nobility an absolute dignity.
 
With small hands you take the sinuous and minimal metal that holds the stone, try to pierce your tongue with the tip, like a hoop. Your experiment makes the history of fashion shake, and your laughter rivals the myths that I forgot that I learned.
 
You take a lapel pin with an encrusted pearl and place it on the fringe of your son’s blanket who is leaving the maternity and who will go to school soon. It is a pastime, the passage — fire-metal-glass-luck. I don’t know whether I kiss your infant forehead or if I see for the last time your face over my death muck. There is a sliver of green between the hypotheses.


Lúcia Leão

Lúcia Leão is a translator and writer originally from Brazil living in the U.S. She has poems published in literary magazines in the U.S. and two books published in Brazil, a collection of short stories and a book for young adults.
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