If walls could speak

I searched through my old poems for a dVerse prompt, and found this one. I wrote it in Spanish (below the English version) in the late 1990s, recalling a time a decade earlier when I was unhappy with my apartment management job and my life in general. I’m usually a big fan of fungi, but not when they grow indoors!

The Leak

Due to the weakness of the roof,
his inability, his carelessness,
his lack of resistance,
several drops infiltrated
little by little
without our knowledge,
in silence, in hiding,
through no fault of our own.
This is always the way;
we walls
support the roof
without complaint,
without a word of thanks,
and at the moment of truth,
the time of storm,
after all we’ve done,
he won’t protect us.
And to think he keeps
the sunshine all to himself,
while we look at each other
like fools in his shadow,
peeling, faded,
with an attack of fungus,
and without any nails for scratching.

La filtración

Debido a la debilidad del techo,
a su incapacidad, su descuido,
su falta de resistencia,
infiltraron unas gotas
poco a poco
sin que nos diéramos cuenta,
en silencio, a escondidas,
y no fue nuestra culpa.
Siempre es así,
nosotras las paredes
lo apoyamos al techo
sin quejarnos,
sin agradecimiento,
y llegado el momento de verdad,
llegada la tormenta,
después de todo lo que hemos hecho,
no nos protege de nada.
Y pensar que los rayos del sol
los mantiene solo para él,
mientras nos miramos
como tontas en su sombra,
descascaradas, deslavazadas,
con un ataque de hongos,
y hasta sin garras para rascarnos

“You idiot! I said, ‘Buy more gold’, not mold!!”

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