The Blues of Forgotten Steel
There is a length of railway steel
rotting inside my chest.
Each morning I shake it,
not out of courage,
but because silence
has always weighed more than iron.
When the metal stirs,
the rust begins to sing.
It is a hymn without God,
without mercy,
the ancient language
of everything that has survived
long enough
to abandon hope.
I light another cigarette,
and the blues accomplishes
what no prayer ever could:
it teaches my ruin
to breathe slowly.
The guitar knows my true name.
Not the one inked upon forgotten papers,
but the name the rain whispered
while turning me
into an abandoned gate,
a disused railway,
a bent nail
left behind by history.
There are nights
when I suspect
I am nothing more than rust
remembering
the shape of the steel
it once consumed.
Still,
I go on shaking
this iron skeleton,
like a man
trying to wake
an engine that died decades ago,
because there is a stubborn dignity
in everything
that refuses
to vanish quietly.
Perhaps beauty
never belonged to roses.
Perhaps it has always waited
inside weathered iron,
within hands blackened by dust,
inside a soul
that plays the blues
to postpone madness
for one more evening.
And if, one day,
someone should stand before this chaos,
I ask for only one act of kindness:
Do not rescue me.
Listen.
For some souls
were never meant
to shine again.
They were forged
to creak beneath the weight of time,
until the whole universe learns
that even rust
can sing the blues.