If It’s to Fall, Let It Be Laughing
(Diary of a Graduate in Free Fall – not live)
Author: D'Bara Arruda

Dear me:
"Keep this poem under your tongue.
When the world knocks you down, it will be your resurrection secret."

To the one who watches over me and doesn’t sleep,
and dwells between the lines of the odus...

Let’s go pick up the shards of what’s left.
Of you? — Please, I’m unbreakable.
The shards are from those who crashed into my light
thinking they could shake my confidence.
— Ah! Got it.

Alright, but let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time — wait, hold up...
It’s not once "upon" anything,
because I’m still here, you get it?

So!
A deep Black man, known as a “cria” — and he had... no —
He still has a dream, one of those trampled,
crushed, and buried so many times
it developed Orpheus' immunity...

Damn!
Many have tried, have knocked him down and looted him — oh!
Yeah...
Bad clay doesn’t shatter when it touches the void.

The secret is getting up
without dusting off
or licking your wounds.
It’s to move forward
and let the dust and blood mix
like concrete,
forming a crust of cunning —
the image of so many falls
that after all these falls
I can already say I am supernatural.

That’s what I am:
legacy of ancestry.

Actually,
I even have a lot to thank you for,
you who pushed me,
because standing still suffocates me.
I don’t like stillness.
Exu works in chaos.

One second...
There.
I just tossed the last piece of you
into the bin of forgetfulness.

I should feel pity —
(I should, but I don’t) —
for those who follow your slick talk
thinking they’re on the right path.

And they kind of are:
it’s by failing that we learn to rebuild in life.
If it’s goodbye you lack, then good luck.

Just a note:
Beware.
The unscrupulous one
has no friends —
just puppets they manipulate.
(“And I cut the strings.”)
And the one who watches over me tells me,
through a cosmic thread
(umbilical cord of the matrix),
coming straight from Orun to my Ori:

— Keep being unbreakable light.
Dress in the darkness of the infinite mystery.
From it comes the guardian angel,
the one who melts falsehood with the blackness of truth.
And one day, it dares to come out from under the rug.

Remember:
Even Exu pauses to confuse those who lack human gratitude.
And upon them,
he delights in laughter,
as they clash their egos together.

“Now, learn to laugh like Exu — even at your own pain.”