Before

I was called something different

until finally I met you

and you called me by my real name.

Then I turned

as if your voice had cast away

a veil, an invisible stone, unbearable,

behind which continued

my actual life, which I’d hardly been

aware of.

 

That was, I’m certain

my one, dazzling

baptism by fire

and there was nobody around but us.

 

I remember it perfectly:

fresh from the shower

you opened your eyes and looked at me

like someone finding a hieroglyph

behind a wall

and you told me

– From now on, I’m going to call you Leo.

Leo, you told me

as if God

who can be so understanding sometimes

had whispered my real name

in your ear,

the one that no one – not even I –

had managed to find, and in so doing

he’d simply said to you

– Rafita, listen up, call him Leo

but not like Leopardi

more like Leonardo Di Caprio.

Yeah; stop laughing.

That’s the name, so lovely and absurd

that his heart directly answers to.