Óscar Méndez Oceguera
I — THE HEARTBEAT THAT HAD NOT YET RECEIVED A NAME
Before my eyes
learned the color of your face,
before my hands
reached for the shape of yours,
before my voice
uttered a single syllable,
I was alive.
Not as an empty promise.
Not as an uncertain possibility.
Not as a suspended dream.
True life.
A soul received.
A person loved from all eternity.
“I was not a memory.
I was not a project.
I was someone.”
I had never known the wind.
I had never known the rain.
I had never seen the dawn.
Yet I already knew your blood.
For within it
my story
had begun.
⸻
II — THE WOUNDED SANCTUARY
There is no sanctuary more hidden
than the one
where a human life begins.
Not of stone.
Not of cedar.
Not raised by human hands.
Flesh sheltering flesh.
Life giving shelter to life.
“The whole universe—
with its mountains,
its seas,
and its stars—
has never fashioned
a dwelling
more worthy
than a mother’s womb.”
There,
blood
was meant to nourish.
The heart
was meant to keep watch.
The body
was meant to protect.
Yet the refuge
learned
the language of rejection.
“The house
came to fear
its own guest.”
“The nest
forgot
why wings
had been made.”
And where nature
had written hospitality,
man
wrote expulsion.
⸻
III — THE REVERSAL OF THE ORDER OF THINGS
The tree
does not devour its seed.
The spring
does not drink
its own waters.
The river
does not climb
back toward the mountain.
The earth
does not refuse the rain.
Everything that exists
protects
that
from which life springs.
Only man
has learned
to raise his hand
against
his own beginning.
“What was meant to nourish
wounded.”
“What was meant to shelter
laid bare.”
“What was meant to say:
Live,
declared instead:
Disappear.”
It was not nature.
It was its denial.
It was not instinct.
It was its corruption.
It was not the necessity of being.
It was the rupture of love.
⸻
IV — THE SILENCE OF THOSE WHO NEVER WEPT
When a soldier falls,
bells answer.
When a king dies,
history
lays down its pen.
When a city disappears,
generations
keep its memory alive.
But when a child
is torn away
from the place
where his existence had begun,
the world
learned
to remain silent.
“There was no mourning.”
“There was no name.”
“There was no grave.”
Only an absence,
administered
as though
it were progress.
Only a statistic,
taking the place
of a face.
Only a language
capable of hiding
what hands
were doing.
“Words
covered the blood.”
“Arguments
concealed the cry.”
“Technique
silenced conscience.”
And silence,
at last,
came to resemble peace.
⸻
V — THE MOTHER WHO WEEPS AS WELL
No heart
was ever created
to forget
its own child.
It may persuade itself.
It may justify itself.
It may harden itself.
But it can never cease
to have been
a mother.
“There are tears
that never reach the eyes.”
“There are griefs
hidden
within the breast
for an entire lifetime.”
Memory
remains
where reason
believes
it has prevailed.
For love
is older
than every ideology.
And blood
remembers
what words
tried to erase.
⸻
VI — THE ABSENT FATHER
There was also
a man.
Not always violent.
Not always cruel.
Very often,
simply absent.
The one
who should have remained,
fled.
The one
who should have protected,
fell silent.
The one
who should have answered,
surrendered
his authority
to fear.
“Many children
died
because first
the father
had died.”
Not his body.
His responsibility.
Not his strength.
His courage.
And whenever
the father
abandons
his place,
the whole world
becomes
a little more
orphaned.
⸻
VII — THE HEAVEN THAT DOES NOT FORGET
No name
is ever lost
before God.
What the world
recorded
as a procedure,
Heaven
called
by its true name.
What men
reduced
to a decision,
Eternal Love
knew
as a person.
“No life
vanishes into nothingness.”
“No soul
is forgotten
by the One
who called it into being.”
The earth
may deny
a grave.
History
may deny
a page.
Men
may deny
a face.
But God
never forgets
what He
has loved
from all eternity.
⸻
VIII — THE APPEAL
Who
will restore
the first embrace?
Who
will teach
those lips
their mother’s name?
Who
will place
into those hands
the bread
they never touched?
Who
will restore
the birthdays
that never dawned?
Who
will answer
the silence
of millions
of children
without memory?
“They do not ask in hatred.”
“They do not accuse in vengeance.”
They wait only
for man
to remember
who he was
before he learned
to call
a right
what destroys
justice.
⸻
For no civilization
endures
once it turns
the sanctuary
into a slaughterhouse.
No freedom
endures
once it breaks
the first covenant
of love.
No progress
deserves
that name
if it begins
by erasing
the smallest among us.
⸻
“Every mother
was created
to say:
Live.”
“Every father
was created
to answer:
I will keep you safe.”
“Every child
was created
to hear,
one day,
the first word
that no law
can ever replace:
Welcome.”
⸻
And so long as
even one child
is denied
the dawn,
the earth
will continue
to wait
for man
to learn again
the meaning
of a word
older
than every constitution,
higher
than every empire,
stronger
than every will to power:
Father.
And another,
the word
that has upheld
the whole world
from the beginning:
Mother.
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