sometimes in the evening
no it’s not me here for quite some time someone has enjoyed inhabiting my days and my nights lacking myself I practice innocence I make love with the shadows when they lie down on the sidewalk and I fill out the absence forms with my blood sometimes in the evening I hear a voice and its echo saying the rain the rain and the blooming lilacs childhood: this snail that hides itself in the shell of my life —translated from the French by Luke Hankins