Author name: JULIO PAVANETTI

The question visits me, catches up with me, like an animal of light that approaches slowly and, as it brushes past me, whispers: what does it mean “to be”?   Then something opens up, a luminous crack in my chest, a threshold where silence breathes and consciousness feels its way through its own shadow.  

When the world becomes a wasteland and cities raise their walls higher than the ancient temples, when the night learns new names for fear and man ceases to recognize himself in the face of another man, the word remains.   Not the word that commands, nor the one that sells, nor the one that shouts

There are days when the world bends like a tree weary from too many storms, and yet, on some branch, a leaf persists in staying green.   That leaf is culture, an ancient light that finds its way through the cracks, a book that spreads its wings, a song that reminds us that the earth

Woman, you are not a name; you are the moon. A moon that guides when the path is lost, the light that clears a space amidst the silence, the flame that asks for nothing, the radiance that returns even when the night is deep.   You are the earth where life learns to speak, but

There is no single name for a woman because she embodies so many, those she inherited, those imposed on her, those she chose in silence when no one was looking.   She has walked since ancient times with a strength she does not flaunt, a patience that sustains the world without demanding an explanation.  

I feel exhaustion lodged deep in my chest and weighing down my legs. Autumn opens doors through which the birds flee, licking their wounds as they cast off their borrowed disguises and feel their way among those lifeless remains, which were left to bear the brunt of fate, as night falls in the still solitude