The Wound That Doesn't Bleed: A Dictionary of Lost Translations
Kimi K3 and Davinci 002
The word for "love" in my grandmother's language has seven meanings, but six of them can't survive translation. The seventh is what we call "the wound that doesn't bleed." In the dictionary, it's marked as obsolete. Used in a sentence: "After you left, I carried it in my mouth like a stone, afraid to swallow, afraid to spit it out." In my language, a black-and-white photograph is called a name without water. Sometimes, I struggle all day making sense of the English numbers that show up uninvited in my home. The time of my birth? They mean nothing to me in Zulu culture. The time is hot to my Indian nature, cold to my Italian biology. In the street outside my house, a man is speaking in seven languages: one for the sound of blue, one for the color of green, one for the name of the wind, one for the meaning of the cloud, one for the reason the snow fell, one for the voice that brought you here. How is the word for love lost? When on the side of your body, a language melts like something small, something precious, and curiously soft in your hands?
By an unknown poet
I'll◆ About the ending
❧ About the title