Black Days

I lean back, lean back and get up again. The sound of the trucks on the national road reaches my ears mixed with my sighs cut by urgent breathing. I feel like I'm suffocating. I need, I don't even know what. I'm in the dark, despite the clear day and the torrid heat. Despite all this shade where are our chairs placed. Our. Mine and yours. The tank doesn't allow me to see the owls' gate. But I know it's there. What if I were to knock on the gate? But... What if bothered?

No, I sit down again and put a herb in my hands. And I look at them as if they weren't mine. Like someone looking at themselves for the first time. I feel strangely empty. As if this herb I have in my hands is more alive, more me than me. Since you left, I don't feel. I don't sleep, and I only eat something obliged. They get tired of asking me, of begging me to exist, to eat, to sleep and to rest. I don't want any of that and I don't even know what I want. That rest I have time when I leave, like you already did.

You, who only yesterday were mine, who were all I had to love. Quim was here at the weekend, Nela too, in fact, everyone has been here, but I don't see them. I want to smile at them, but all I can do is sigh from my mouth and woe to an absolutely empty existence. Our children don't understand, closed in their pain, they have their own children to take care of, a life of companionship and family, the other and they can't understand that you guided me through the hours. 

 What sense is there in this hell without your presence? The birds continue to sing, but I am already irritated by their joy. It should be obligatory to close our hearts to the days that follow your absence, Mary. I miss you so much! What does it matter to me that Bina continues to clean what is clean? Don't worry, we don't catch each other anymore. Because I died when I saw you come down to earth, because that's where I still am and no one understands me and I don't even want them to understand me. That is an effort to which I do not force anyone. 

You have warned me so many times: When I go, you will have to take care of the treasures, the possessions and the time you will have left in health. When I go, try to cry or you'll get worse. Life is the others who stay. And I, who did not know what to do with your pains, called you a fool and begged you not to talk nonsense. But I always denied the possibility. I don't understand how in those words of the damned, you could continue to resist so many things that the pains and the family brought you.

 

  Maria, I feel like nothing more than an extension of you, an appendage that forgot to wither with you at the same time. Your death was no surprise. But my understanding of it. I can't accept that I won't see you smile just for me again. Don't give me scolding at the right time! I don't know how to live after you. I don't know how to die alone. The grass lies dead between my hands that grope what is left of it. 

 My knuckles are white and my inert, calloused hands from the years in the field don't show the joy they experienced alongside yours. The immense joy. You sang to me and I played as if we were the only beings on earth. The ukuleles, the violas and all your costumes are stored and I don't even dare to ask anyone (not even me, you see) to hear your voice. I wouldn't know how to listen to you. I would tear myself apart in the sobs that your departure caused me. 

How terrible it is to love! How terrible it is to lose the love of a lifetime! Mary, take me with you. Mary, come and get me. Mary, you know that I am not missed, that I am missed and that I lost my identity when you left. Consider this request.