never take anyone for granted

i got a tattoo.
a personal memorial for my dear friend.
it is large & will be on my body forever.

residence on earth

"Barcarole"

If you would only touch my heart,
if only you would put your mouth on my heart,
your delicate mouth, your teeth,
if you would put your tongue like a red arrow
there where my dusty heart beats,
if you would blow on my heart, near the sea, weeping,
it would sound like a dark noise, with the sound
of sleepy train wheels,
like wavering waters,
like a leafy autumn,
like blood,
with a noise of moist flames burning the sky,
sounding like dreams or branches or rains,
or foghorns in a dreary port,
if you would blow on my heart, near the sea,
like a white ghost,
at the edge of the foam,
in the midst of the wind,
like an unchained ghost, at the edge of the sea, weeping.

Like an extended absence, like a sudden bell,
the sea spreads the sound of the heart,
raining, at nightfall, on a lonely coast:
night doubtless falls,
and its mournful shipwrecked-banner blue
peoples itself with planets of hoarse silver.

And the heart sounds like a sour snail,
call, oh sea, oh lament, oh melted fright
scattered in misfortunes and rickety waves:
from resonance the sea reveals
its recumbent shadows, its green poppies.

If you suddenly existed, on a gloomy coast,
surrounded by the dead day,
facing a new night,
filled with waves,
and if you blew on my heart cold with fear,
if you blew on the lonely blood of my heart,
if you blew on its flaming dove movement,
its black bloody syllables would sound,
its incessant red waters would swell,
and it would sound, sound of shadows,
sound like death,
it would call like a tube filled with wind or weeping,
or a bottle squirting fright in spurts.

So it is, and the lightning would cover your tresses
and the rain would enter through your open eyes
to prepare the weeping that you silently enclose,
and the black wings of the sea would wheel around
you, with great claws, and croakings, and flights.

Do you want to be the solitary ghost that near the sea
plays upon its sad and sterile instrument?
if only you would call,
its prolonged sound, its malevolent whistle,
its arrangement of wounded waves,
someone would perhaps come,
someone would come;
from the peaks of islands, from the depths of the sea,
someone would come, someone would come.

Somebody would come; play furiously,
let it sound like the siren of a broken boat,
like a lament,
like a whinny in the midst of the foam and the blood,
like a ferocious water gnashing and echoing.

In the sea season
its snail of shadow circles like a shout,
the sea birds belittle it and fly away,
its roll call of sounds, its mournful crosspieces,
rise on the shore of the solitary sea.

-Pablo Neruda