“In a frightening silence”

Num silêncio assustador
Onde ouço somente o ruído
Que o ventilador insiste em fazer
Sem nem mesmo querer

Pensando bem,
Há um cutucar
De lápis sem parar

Estou sozinha no silêncio
E ainda escuto vozes
Ao longe a cochichar
Para ninguém desconfiar

Será que é minha mente,
Ou está cheio de gente?
Nem sei mais identificar
Aonde posso estar.

Gabriela Helena de Oliveira Borges was born on November 25, 2000, in a city in the interior of São Paulo, Brazil, called Franca.  She is the third and youngest child of a fierce and kind couple.  She was educated in private secondary schools and it was in the first of these, Escola de Arte Criativa Toulouse Lautrec, that she discovered the magic of art and developed her charm for writing, always with the support of her family.  For two consecutive years she won first place in the school poetry competition and she never stopped writing.  She currently attends hight school at Novo Colégio, in her home city

In a frightening silence
In which I hear only the sound
That the fan insists on making
Without even wanting to

Thinking hard,
There’s a never-ending jab
Of the pencil

I am alone in the silence
And still I hear voices
From afar whispering
That nobody distrust them

Could it be that it’s my mind,
Or is it full of people?
I don’t know nor do I recognize
Whither I can be.

Tucson, Arizona born-and-raised, Shelby London Salemi practices capoeira angola and is earning her MFA in Writing at the University of California San Diego.  Her writing has appeared in the online journal Spiral Orb and the 2016 print anthology The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide.  She is working on her first novel.