“My mind”

Minha mente
Mesmo dividindo
O mesmo espaço com o meu coração,
Não se dá por vencida
Nem por votação.

Posso ouvir o meu coração
Falando para não seguir a razão
Mas, mesmo assim
Escuto a razão
Me dizendo para não seguir
O coração.

Por que os comandantes
Do meu ser
Não podiam se entender?

Queria tanto amar
Pessoas que meu coração
Me diz não
Queria tanto ter pessoas
Que minha mente
Não me impeça.

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

My mind
Even splitting
The same space with my heart,
Does not accept defeat
Not even by vote counts.

I can hear my heart
Saying not to follow reason
But, just the same
I listen to reason
Telling me not to follow
The heart.

Why is it that the commanders
Of my being
Cannot understand?

I wished so much to love
People that my heart
Told me not to
I wished so much to have people
That my mind
Does not allow me.

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.