A poem by Chandra Livia Candiani, translated from the Italian by Roy Duffield and Elisabetta Taboga
And yet we were alone
when you delivered me over
to the darkness of the December night,
the borrowed father
didn’t decide
to come back,
everyone was on holiday,
you birthed me out of spite
up against the foot of the night
against the festivities,
you sowed my shoulders
with snowflakes
and for days
I was half starved
and nameless, happily
buried in my alphabet of flesh.