You know mother, yesterday I heard you crying.
I was scared, Mom.
I realised that your tears did not augur a good thing.
Dad hasn’t stroked my head in days,
nor you sing Nina Nana.
I feel cold, Mama! I feel night!
I can’t sleep.
I hear, continuously, thunders that shatter my soul.
Sirens that pierce my body.
Bullets that assassinate my future.
I sink in the anxiety that floods your womb in convulsions.
Your heart seems to explode.
Your body seems to expel me.
I try to hold on to the cord that coils around my foot.
In vain. It slips away.
Mother, I’m afraid!
Afraid of living in Humanity.
Afraid of dying and killing.
Don’t you love me anymore, Mother?

Isilda Nunes is a Portuguese artist, writer and poet, Doctor Honoris Causa in Philosophy, Letters, Arts and Humanities in Barcelona. Her poems have been published in anthologies, magazines and newspapers in about fifty countries and translated into more than forty languages. Author of books of poetry and prose,  she is co-author of more than a hundred national and international anthologies, has won numerous awards and recognitions in many countries, and is part of the board of directors of several cultural movements both nationally and internationally.