LatinosUSA

THE HORSES ARRIVE WEARING MIRRORS

4 a.m., the cathedral burns in the rain.
Nobody notices. The women smoke beside the river.
A child sells counterfeit halos from a backpack.

Time for the guards to change.
You can hear it inside the peaches,
and the television snow,
empty noise from saints left too long underwater.

Subway priests bless debit cards,
riot helicopters drop dead flowers over the stadium,
horses with silver teeth cut the distance to the coastline.

Drums.
Girls in balaclavas
livestream the apocalypse,
and genuflex beneath a flickering pharmacy cross.

The sea caresses abandoned hotels.
and the dead change uniforms.

What survives?
Not the empires.
Not the turbulence of prophecy preached from penthouse balconies.

Maybe only:
the janitor dancing with ghosts in the embassy kitchen,
the boxer feeding breadcrumbs to pigeons at dawn,
the boy in the alley teaching himself trumpet.

The last guard is gloveless.
The next one steps forward wearing your face.

The horses arrive wearing mirrors.
The mirrors arrive on fire.
Beyond the checkpoints of sleep
the old world kneels beside the new one
to exchange a password written in dust.

(Valencia, España, 12 MAY 2026, Francisco Bravo Cabrera)