The People of Valencia

Bureaucracy, my love says, is the child of corruption, and I nod, staring out the window as fog erases the edges of the world.

The people spend their Christmas in the mud,

while the leaders speak of unity

from balconies untouched by ruin.

I don’t need translation to hear the truth

in the voices of those who lost everything—

thanks carried not to officials,

but to strangers with steady hands,

to the ones who show up when no one else does.

Bureaucracy, my love says,

is the child of corruption,

and I nod, staring out the window

as fog erases the edges of the world.

For a moment, I forget the men in their suits,

the silent machinery of power

that keeps the water rising.

But the people do not forget.

They stand in the wreckage,

feet sinking into the earth that holds them,

finding each other in the silence.

Their Christmas is not hymns of false peace,

but a quiet rhythm of hands meeting hands,

a truth that cannot be sold or borrowed,

that blooms, unbidden, in the dark.