«Sand In My Eyes» (poetry by Francisco Bravo Cabrera)

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SAND IN MY EYES

A house by the sea,

an Andalusian pony on wet sand,

my mother splashing warm water.

The border collie panting a smile.

High on the cliff, a ledge cut from rock

where the horizon held still.

Later, the Pyrenees—

a dark scrub of boar and oak,

brittle branches, soft canopy.

I pooled in their shadows,

starved for the salt of the coast.

Too small to see over the shoulders,

the giant masks dancing the square,

I fled the feast days—

the raw noise binding my wrists to the bedpost.

At eighteen, forced into boots

built for rot and riverbank.

Slick mud was my sand.

I stood, arms locked across my chest

in the blind dark.

While others recalled blue water,

my bleeding hands scraped algae from the leather.

I lived on spirits

scraped from the bottom of a tin canteen.

Andalusian horses wheel around me in the dark

as the last drop burns my tongue.

Cliffs and timber rise

out of the hot westerly wind.

A short house by the sea,

a horse, a dog,

and sand grit under the lids.

Francisco Bravo Cabrera, 19 AUG 2026, Ilica, Turkey

Instagram: @Francisco_Bravo_Cabrera

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