What are the words you do not have yet? [Or, for what do you not have words, yet?]
Perhaps in this season, sentimental and full of insufficiency, I’m willing to admit that I crave love; that I’m so desperately in need of it.
Lately, I’ve been writing about it, driven by a deep desire for the romance that surrounds my daily life. But, can you really write about something you have never experienced?
Well, I’ve been doing it so I guess I have an affirmative answer.
I often think about Icarus and Apollo; and about Hades and Persephone.
To be loved tenderly by a God. What an ideal thought. That’s what I recreate in my mind when solitude surrounds me: to be desired, to be desperately loved by someone who could have anyone but chooses you.
But, that’s a love that is not for me.
I’m more an Icarus, extremely in love with a God, astonished enough that I will let him/her consume me just to feel an inner warmth. A gullible child that takes anything she has been offered and throws herself directly to the sun just to become a fire that has been set up with her illusions.
But, these are the words I do not have yet.
But, the thing is, before he fell, Icarus flew.
A Life in V acts
I
Whenever I could, I used to take a train to the city.
And, once I was in Madison Avenue,
I put a big hat on my head and
look at the store windows.
As an elegant lady.
II
One day, I couldn't wear my hat anymore.
I married a farmer, and
moved to the wheat field
where my hat, slowly,
died in a trunk.
III
I had the appropriate husband,
with the appropriate house,
and the appropriate kids.
Not a frivolous life
but a feminine one.
IV
I scrubbed the kitchen floor,
I put on my big hat and
went to the shed.
My husband's shotgun
wasn't that cold.
V
I pulled the trigger.
Someone has to leave first. This is an old story. There is no other version of this story. The moment I realized I can’t own eternity my logical world fell apart. I used to live on the surface, scared and the repulse of magnetic and unexplored connections but, the first moment we met, I knew it, I knew you; like oh, hello, it’s you. It’s going to be you. But now, I can’t feel my skin on yours; I can close my eyes and see you and I touch your face and the void grows and I wake up from a cruel dream. “Don’t abandon me in the dark” I want to say, to whom? You are no longer here, sometimes I wonder if you ever were. When I want to torture myself, I close my eyes and, for an illusionary second, I believe that you’re still here, that you grab my hand, that you kiss my forehead, that you love me; for an illusion second.
And, suddenly, in the blink of an eye, my entire world faded to black, I began to fracture and I couldn’t cover the permanent marks on my skin. It is not fair, but I blame you, I do because I could not forgive myself for what happened to you: I screw our opportunity in this life because I was so embodied in my own suffering I couldn’t see beyond. But, what if we don’t have another chance; what if you taking your life meant the end of your future selves; what if I could not purge all my sins; what if it was our end, what then?
No logic is to be found in the transmigration of the soul or reincarnation, my inner truth knows this and still, I believe that death must be transformed into life at any cost, I believe that two souls don't crash by accident, I believe we will meet again and I will gasp thinking: ‘it's you, it's going to be you’.
I haven’t met you yet
I haven’t met you yet but, let me slow down. I still have so much to read, so much shirt art to do, so many bad dances to perform, so many laughs to give, so many people to meet, and so many places to be.
We could meet somewhere, I will recognize you and, while we sit in the windows of our cheap apartment with our legs hanging out. I will tell you everything.
I will be waiting for you, and that place seems as good as anywhere else.
And, the reason why I am writing this is because I want to meet you, I really do. But I am not ready yet.
What I would tell you
I like being alone. Drinking coffee alone, walking alone, listening to music alone, reading alone, eating alone, dancing alone…; I’ve grown to enjoy myself and to love being myself and by myself. But, the thing I will never admit to anyone, sometimes not even myself, is how desperately I want to be loved, to be accepted, to belong; I don’t think I could say it out loud. How I want someone who, on purpose, is going to care about me, is going to love me, is going to be there… Anyone but someone who chooses me, who wants me; and I don’t know how embracing my solitude or exposing myself to the outside world will substitute for being wanted, for being a part of someone’s life, and for being the person one’s referring to saying: that’s my friend, lover, comrade and she is awesome, she is great, she is enough. So, at this point, I’ve realized some stories ended even before they’ve started: I crave for affection, for an epiphany of love and friendship but, when the time comes, I step back, I don’t do it, and a part of me is cool with that: I’m used to the pain that comes with the avoidance of suffering. But, in another life, Araceli; in another life, Dani; while we laughed that we are apart in this one, I would tell you: I like you and I like how you see the beauty in me; and I would tell you: I want to be with you and I want to make this work. Or, maybe one day, preferably when we’re both blindly drunk, I will say: I wanted it to be you. God damn, I really did.
So, my story is like this: once upon a time there was this girl who dreamt about being somewhere else, who dreamt about creating a group, who dreamt about unconditional relationships; a girl who grew up hearing: things usually work out in the end. Well, they do, but not for people like me, not for desperate people, not for people who sabotage themselves. And, I guess what García Márquez stated in One hundred years of solitude is true: “races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth” (201).
What I would tell you 2
I cared, I really did. And, even though time has passed and even though I don’t seek to tell you what has happened; it still rips my soul the isolation I felt and the fact that friends are there and you weren’t.
I’m not asking you to have the guts of knowing what you want and act on it; I know you don’t have them. But it destroys me that I was once vulnerable and you comforted me but suddenly forget.
I guess I feel this way when solitude attacks and sadness take control; and when I don’t want to admit that a part of me, naïve and anxious and desperate, still wants you in my life.
What kind of love?
Ok, so, imagine you’re taking a photo and she is behind you and, slowly, she is coming to you with the complicity of the camera and, then, in a second she jumps into your back laughing, and she surprises you, and you are so happy that she did that.
She is that, an unexpected, loud, and laughable surprise that goes and kisses your cheek, your face, and your neck.
And then, is when you want to stop time: she hugs you from the back and laughs because she, too, loves surprises.
One
Never trust a survivor till you find out what they did; not even in those moments where everything is pity and tears, that doesn’t erase the past. We never asked; we never trusted each other, not fully, at least and so a suspicious air always floated around us. I know what I did, not proud. I would do it again, nevertheless. I’m not asking for forgiveness, neither this is the prelude to my story, what happened is deep in time.
Maybe I’m paying for my sins, expurgating them in a slow, painful and ridiculous death; while the only friend I had is desperately trying to save me. There are only two of us left, we used to be seven, and soon he will be the last one standing. Maybe he doesn’t want to be left alone here, or maybe he cares about me; I do want to believe the second option, I do, why not leave this life believing a pretty illusion? I won’t be conscious much longer, I better acknowledge every moment.
Trembling has taken control of my body. I breathe heavily trying to control it but I don’t want it to stop, I know what that will mean and I can’t. He presses his T-shirt against my stomach as he has been doing since he found me, he doesn’t know what to do, neither do I; I guess he hasn’t given up hope, I have. Then, why don’t I stop crying? The bleeding keeps running and he keeps trying, in vain, to stop it without looking at me in the eye; without exteriorizing how he is losing his mind; without the guts to realize how this is going to end.
I’m afraid. I can’t go, I can’t…
“I’m not ready,” I managed to mumble.
I’m sweating. It’s so disgusting, my sweat and the blood would make a disgusting cocktail. Amazing how a disturbance thought almost made the trick of fooling the pain; I don’t know if the tears that run down my face are made of suffering or fear; anyway, I don’t bother to clean them with my hand, for what purpose?
“Will your God protect me when I’m gone?” I need consolation, something to hold. “In the other life.”
“My God will protect you now.”
“She can’t,” we cannot fool ourselves anymore. “Neither can you, not now.”
When he drops the shirt he has been pressing against my stomach I want to tell him to don’t give up because I don’t want to die, I don’t want to start it over again, alone.
I squeeze the indigo stone that hangs on my neck; it can’t help me anymore. I give it to him.
“No, no, no,” he tries to give it back to me. “You need this, to protect yourself.”
“Protection is not a problem anymore; your saint will protect me; don’t tell me it expandable wave can’t reach my next life.”
“Of course, it can.”
“Besides, you ought to have my collar so I can recognize you the next time we will see each other.”
“Yeah? The next time, uh? What if am I a white republican part of Trump’s government? I can’t be seen with a collar with a rock. I would be a man!
The bad joke me laugh, not a good thing for my body right now.
“The collar is a material object, it cannot, it doesn’t…,” I tried to explain. “Look, you know Plato and his theory of the body and the soul?” He nodded. “Well, the stone is the body and, the essence of it, the energy within, is the soul; this is what will cross to your next life and it will materialize in… I don’t know… a tie, maybe.”
He smiles at me and keeps the necklace.
“I will need to recognize you too,” he gives me one of his bracelets. “You know, for our shake, you must be rich when I get there.”
“I will get rich.”
“Or drink trying.”
The loneliness of the beginning, I can cope with that but, what if we don’t see each other again, what if this was our last life together?
“I need my friend.”
“We will see each other again because this life was not enough.”
“Close my eyes when I’m gone.”
He holds his tears, his screams, his fury; because that’s the great tragedy, to be left on earth when someone is not.
She
I saw her tonight.
Without heads, four women were walking alongside the corridor in blue electric dresses with yellow, red, and black motives.
She carried bags using the four bodies that they left in certain doors.
All at once, they all turn their bodies towards me.
It was my turn.