ALCHEMY OF PEACE

It is not the silence that extinguishes, but the fire that stills,

the way in which the ashes still hold the warmth of the embers.

You are the vessel where pain, poured little by little,

loses its sharp edges, becomes water that does not break.

Loss is not an abyss that swallows the light,

it is the earth turned over, deep, ready to receive.

I sowed memories like grains, not to ask for your return,

but to see what we had grow, into roots that do not die.

Here, where the river of anguish widens and slows,

I find that peace is not reaching a distant shore,

but learning to navigate even when the water moves,

taking you with me, light as the air I breathe.

We are this slow alchemy: what was, transforms,

does not disappear, changes shape, becomes part of me.

 And so, we walked together, now weightless, without farewell,

with the calm of a stone that knows how to be part of the path.

GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution’s Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet in the Educational and Social Relations Division of the UNACCC South America – Argentina Chapter.