"The House" by Jenny Bernal - Latin American Literature Today

The House

by Jenny Bernal

October, 2017

Welcome to this house
your home,
here you breathe the bitter cold
of that absent breath.
Welcome to this house
of anger and tears,
indeed you can sit
where your footsteps run out
where your skin dries.
The house has changed a bit
—you’ll forgive me—
but I’ve avoided painting it
so that the cracks of time
will give it a little bit of that familiar tinge.

It is the same house, don’t be afraid,
that same one that we built some time ago,
waiting to be alone enough
to live in it.

Translated by Anastasia Ramjag

Jenny Bernal

Jenny Bernal (Bogotá, Colombia, 1987) has worked in reading promotion and cultural management. She is a Master's student in Literary Studies at the National University and co-founder of the "Ojo en la Tinta" Festival. Currently, she is a member of the editorial committee of the journal Contestarte and the Latin American poetry magazine La Raíz Invertida. She published in Raíces del viento, a compilation of five young Colombian poets, and also worked on the selection and prologue of Postal del oleaje, an edition of poets born in the 1980s in Colombia and Mexico.

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