Maria Christodoulou
Body
Tonight, dreams are blowing in the wind.
The waves, before they are born
in the dream
like foam on the shore
shatter in memory.
Children draw
with their nails on the sand
skies.
A sun without contour.
The mother holds in her bosom
the shadows of the homeland.
Vultures, hawks, eagles fly.
Sorrows sink inward
deep into the chest.
Silently, time becomes place.
The words
the houses
the glances, the people
were lost in the body of tomorrow.
In the air, a word floats:
I was.
No one hears it.
Only the wind
the one that touches the unspeakable
and leaves behind
a body without season.
Light insists
on engraving itself upon nothingness.
The wing of the sun
War is an excavator.
With claws, steaming ribs
death in the veins
it digs the future and buries it.
It passes through shattered cities
through nameless bodies
through dismembered children.
The earth trembles
uprooted walls everywhere.
At a corner of the world
in a homeland where the blood has dried
in a place where stones hide the memory
the sun, the moon
are picking up the scattered pieces.
Shivering voices
then loud
words that do not burn
are the breaths of those who survived
standing naked before the light
and claiming it.
The excavator stops.
The claws break.
In the silence
a word rises in the ruins
like a feather lifting in the wind:
WITHOUT A NAME
They call him by a number
on the lists he has no surname.
Only one word: pending.
He wears a second-hand jacket
holds a phone without signal.
The photos inside
have nowhere to belong.
He knows the soil that bears no fruit
the borders that never say “go through.”
He speaks softly
not out of fear
out of habit.
Cracks run across his palms
from all the times he’s clenched them
holding on to what remained
of before.
He dreams with his eyes open
because sleep is not allowed.
Not a refugee.
Not a migrant.
Not a stranger.
Human
outside the field of recognition.
The Miracle Within
A drop of light on a rain-washed leaf
hides a sun you’ve never seen.
A thought that passed in silence
is a door to worlds without end.
A slender shadow high in the sky
points to roads you never walked.
And a bird that leaves with the wind
whispers words never spoken.
Don’t search for the miracle in the distant
it is within you, small and bright.
In every glance, in every now
beats the heart of the unseen.
And when summer gently falls silent
in the golden light of afternoon
thyme and earth-salt fill the air
there you find yourself, without even seeking.
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| Maria Christodoulou |
Βiography
Maria Christodoulou is from Famagusta and lives in Larnaca. She studied pedagogy at the Cyprus Pedagogical Academy and at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Following that, preceded with her postgraduate studies at the University of Reading, UK. She is engaged in poetry, prose, dancing and painting. Her poems and short stories were included in literary magazines and anthologies in Cyprus and abroad. Her first poetry collection, “Hand gestures in the light”, was in the shortlist for the Thraka award of 2023. She is a member of the Organizing Committee of the Larnaca’s World Poetry Festival , the Cultural Movement of Larnaca «Friends of Literature and Culture”, the Cyprus Writers Union, the National Writer’s Union of Cyprus, Pen Greece and the Literature and Criticism Association.
