Poetry: "Read", by bonzopoe

1 day ago (Edited)

Image generated with Midjourney

Read

I read. I nourish myself.
I devour things I understand and things I don’t understand,
trusting in the digestion of my dreams,
trusting that they will nourish something inside,
that they will resurrect something dead
or give birth to something new.
Trusting that they will be the material that makes possible
the transformation of matter
into ideas, into plots, into structures
that will later become words.

I read. I nourish myself.
Sometimes chewing like a cow,
the same thing over and over.
Sometimes devouring like a shark,
everything in a single bite.
I do it almost by instinct,
without worrying about half-digested fears,
about long-standing fears, about poisons,
or about being contaminated by foolish sentimentality.

I read. I nourish myself.
I do it to build myself
from fragments of what others have been.
To be part of humanity’s ongoing quest
to understand its place,
to comprehend its role in this world
where we are nothing more than a speck of dust
floating in the void,
yet at the same time we are both origin and destiny.

I read. I nourish myself.
I do it to fight the cold,
to avoid becoming fuel for the flames,
to feel alive.
I do it so as not to lose the hope
of being, at least in part,
the master of my own destiny.
I do it to exist.
I do it to be.

©bonzopoe, 2026.

Note: This text was originally written in Spanish. It has been translated and slightly modified to adapt it to English.