Sunday, September 22, 2024

She lived in a crooked house

  She lived in a four-dimensional house 

Everything had length, width, depth 

And grief

Every nook and cranny full of losses

And absences.

She can barely hold back her tears

Noticing her fading memories


No matter where she turns trying to leave that house

She only finds an eternity of nothingness 

She then turns into herself

Like a black hole that is doomed to disappear 

Under the weight of her grief  

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Can’t buy me love

 She reflects on the futility of love. One cannot earn it, cannot save it for better times, for emergencies. All one can do with love is give it with no assurances that any of it will come in return

As a matter of fact, even the love one gives can’t  reach the object of affection for sure. One can give love, but such love may never be received or even acknowledged. 

And it requires so much energy. 

Friday, November 25, 2022

Beautiful hats in silenced memories

She placed one of her best hats on her mother's head in the coffin. How pretty her mom looked in that hat! Her mom would have liked to see herself in the mirror with it. Not much of a hat, more like a fascinator, a small cascade of lavender feathery flowers with a net containing them on the base.

"Are you going to bury her with the hat or do you want to take it back with you?" What a stupid question to make to a grieving daughter that had just traveled for 14 hours to be there just in time for the burial!

While she admired her mom in the coffin, her daughter approached and sang a mournful tune. A beautiful voice that no one besides her had heard before. An improbable Italian tune that amazed everyone at the funeral home. Never again would anyone hear her daughter singing like that. Her daughter died two years later, without ever singing in public after that.

She remembers the scene as she puts on a winter hat. Late nights, when both she and her daughter couldn't sleep, both haunted by different demons, each one in a separate room, she would hear her daughter practicing tunes. She yearned for talking to her about it, to share with her what she knew about singing and music, but doing so would only open an even big chasm between the two. 

The constant buzzing in her ears now dampens the sounds of the memories she might have in the deep recesses of her brain.


Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Wasted tears

 She was laying in bed. It was cold and she felt as if the hand of a small child was touching hers. It felt like her daughter, as a child was telling her in a terse way: “I love you! Now go on”

No mom, no sweetness. She then remembered the tears she left her daughter shed growing up. What for? Tears were supposed to teach one a lesson. They make one stronger for adulthood. Had she known her daughter would die so young, she would prevent every tear. Not a single one would ever roll down her sweet face because there would be no need for lessons.


Saturday, July 9, 2022

Spools


 She remembered one story her mom told her when she was a child: “when I was your age I use to save the wooden spools to make pretend high heels. We would put the spools on our heels and wound around the ankle with twine. We would go up and down the neighborhood trotting with our high heels. We would stay on these spools for so long that we would have the hole engraved on our heels. After a while the twine was not needed anymore.” 

As a child she found grotesque that image of heels permanently marred by the imprint of the spools. But the fact that the girls back then treasured the wooden spools, keeping and trading on it was somehow sweet. 

From now on, she could never ignore a wooden spool. 

Friday, April 8, 2022

Reflexions in search of a poet

 She is looking at a pile of old journals. She finds some of her reflections from the time she had lost her son: 

"I'm looking for a poem

to dress myself with,

to cover the private parts of my pain.

Poems there are many,

but poets, 

very few.


I lost mine.


So I pile the poems

that are scattered around

trying to find him

to no avail.


Time dilutes the memories.

The good ones.

The sad ones.

Until all it is left

is my dried-up soul."

----------------------------

"When I lost my son

I lost my solitude

I'm surrounded by his death

All the time.

I want to be alone

to remember him

but all my memories

are blurred by the big

sad stain of his death.


When I lost my son

I lost all my friends.

Most of them don't

want to be stained

by his death.

The dear, dear ones

I can't bear their emotions

any longer.

If they are happy

it seems so frivolous,

if they are sad

it seems so frivolous.

"Tell me about the son you lost?"

Oh! You didn't lose any. How would you know then?


When I lost my son

I lost all my wishes

my future doesn't make sense,

because my son will never be present.


I lost my companion

in long chats at night

in phone calls 

filled with intelligent conversations.

I lost an important reference"

-----------

"I wish I could have embraced you at the time of your greatest suffering, but all I can do is submit myself to a similar suffering, living on the verge of hopelessness and death.

My desire is that when I get to that critical moment, I'll see you and we will embrace each other"

----------------

At this point, she stops thinking. She knows that there won't be such a moment. Her children are gone and there will be no embrace, no permanence. 


Monday, January 24, 2022

Once I had a life that made me feel so small

She reflected on how people fussed about holidays, memorial dates, birthdays... How they attach themselves to big events. How all these big things clutter the vanishing memory that clings to remain relevant in her brain.

It's the little things that hurt the most. That folding of the laundry done in silence, that underwear that doesn't need to be bought, the socks that will go lost forever, the shoes resting in the closet with no wear, the recipes that go un-tasted.

Maybe she didn't buy enough underwear, perhaps a forgotten birthday present. A lost phone call.

In these insignificant moments, the absence is most evident. No memory can exactly convey what her daughter would do, and what her son would say. Those moments in which she looks around and there is nothing but a cat and dog that got tired of waiting for her and resorted to curling on the bed.