Draft and the love whirlwind

 

And I asked you quietly: remember, remember and, as I only heard Latimer, and his silence in the pause of listening to him, I repeated: remember? And you, after asking me questions quietly, in concrete terms, ran away. And I stayed and had no more ways to show you what neither of us forgot, that love only dies when it is not love, but not when it is perverted by skirmishes that neither of us created, and we, God knows, did nothing to make the separation come, or did you? or did I? the wall full of kilometers of concrete, of absurdities, my love, and while I entered into ruminations and wanderings, I was making a hole and burying myself inside. No answers arrived, neither good nor bad, only the silence between us, building itself compactly, each day a year, each longing an abyss that separated me from you, but there was still the mark of your arms, there was still a path that I kept inside, so inside that I even hid the coordinates, from the world, from myself, I was building the opposite path of rewind, I went back, because I needed to understand, and yes, I am the ignorant who, when she doesn't understand, stands with her donkey ears turned against the wall and I drifted in the wreckage of the inconclusive past. Do you know? I believe that the others who want you away from me have all come together and even threatened you, as if with this blackmail, they could distort reality, that within my truth is you. You have always been a part of me. And remember, if love is the way, you are the way.

I walked down Rua Formosa countless times, sometimes I was beautiful too, other times, just the street that accompanied your daily steps, beautiful because that's where you live, wanderer, between Rua da Alegria and Rua Formosa, going up to Santa Clara, yes, I often brought him snacks, in those difficult phases of allergies to everything, because he only drank chocolate milk or cereals well, and I saw him getting thinner every day, skinny like the Gimbras that you had also been, and with the chocolate milk, I would bring him a croissant with cheese and ham, sometimes a cheese sandwich, I would bring him a banana, sometimes honey tablets, to sweeten his mouth from the pain he harbored. And I insisted on always parking in the parallel of Fernandes Tomás, in Ales da Veiga, in the same garage where I knew you kept your car, the gentleman knew me, he knew that I was Baquetas' mother, I would go down to the local café or the one in front of the day school and there I would have my coffee, always paying attention to the sidewalk outside, always anxious to see you and in that sight, the nervous tension drying up my glottis and not letting the water go down my throat and I would take two sips from the glass of water, while I asked for the bill and got his snack, and I went to the doctor. Beatriz went up the stairs, after passing by the games room, I never found him there, which made me sigh with relief. I would meet him and he would come down with me on the sidewalk, in the crowd of older colleagues than him, older than him, and we would lean against the lamppost on the sidewalk, and he would have lunch there and he was also anxious. He would ask me short questions and then kick the curb, as if distracted, and when I answered him, I would calm down and turn his attention back to the croissant or donut, and his nervousness would be mine. It would be my fault, that my anxiety was always reflected on my face and contaminated my speech and I took a deep breath and combed his hair with my hand, my son, you're getting so thin, eat and he: Mom, I'll eat! and he ate, but always thin, and there he went again telling him to pay attention in citizenship class, not to miss classes, to participate, that Dr. Beatriz had told me about the distraction and the chatter in class, about the absences, and so as not to hear me or worry me, he would say yes and when the crowd of kids started to come in, when the laughter and chatter died down, he would tell me he had to go and I would give him a kiss, on his hair or on his thin cheeks, that he would run away from my kisses if he saw big guys who would then call him a mummy's boy, and I would let him go, pretending to be happy and I would give him the smiles I wanted, to replace his anxiety and sadness under the stones of the streets, where he would walk.

I was heading back to the car, no longer in a hurry, and my hope was strange and paradoxical. I dreamed of seeing you, but I was afraid it would happen. I threw the scarf over my shoulder and covered my mouth and nose, as if I had to dress up to be able to stumble upon the joy of seeing you and the sadness of not being able to have you. Ambiguous things I had to take and swallow. Or see you accompanied! It would be a cyanide pill. I've never seen you accompanied. And every time I saw you, I wasn't seen. Maybe just one or two. And I recorded your walk, your clothes, your bag, the way you looked at the world around you and I thought, with God and with myself, that you were still the same, you were still you, and still being you, kept me, like a faithful dog, chased away, behind an owner who has forgotten us. He still knew and still felt the same inside, the woman and the girl inside diving into the stolen past, each day more distant and more unfair.

It's curious, because the feeling of helplessness is exactly that, of a dog that is loved and then abandoned to its own fate.

Yesterday I went to investigate this and that and found a name inside. Gossip. So many lies that time will dismantle them. So much hurt caused to hurt me.

 I cut them all off. The puzzle that had been hidden from me in the nebula of chosen ignorance was complete. Sadness or weakness or impotence stay with us, they stay and subjugate us to the return, this eternal return, but why? I cut out all the names.

All things. The processes! And the catharsis always happens, returning to the scene of the crime, an infinite loop, what happened, where the fork occurred, which characters were constant, and the damn sunglasses hid me from the sun shining on my face, but they didn't hide you. I revealed you to be the same in this passage of time, as age increased, calendars increased, faces aged, your wisdom grew and my hope diminished, from a young woman already consumed by wind and wrinkles. And now, that I have faced this ignorant monster, now that I have forcibly ripped off his sunglasses, that I have thrown his blind man's cane away, the mirror shows my small, withering eyes and I look at the image of who I am, and there is no monster. There is a beautiful human being, with a certain serenity, acquired through the law of strength and exhaustion, of the blows he took and the lessons he learned, and I melt in tenderness for myself. I am strong. I am very beautiful. I am a coherent person and I remain awake, upright, free from juggling or excuses. Honest and upright. As my father would have liked. As any father would wish. And accompanied by my guardian angels, completely guided by them, who are neither blind nor deaf, as I was, nor are they of this world, under their tutelage, I cut through everything that crosses my path. I no longer judge myself, I no longer force myself to empathize with the empathy that brought me here. I kept the empath inside, it's locked up tight, it won't come out anymore, except to send you love, which I keep sending you. You follow me without knowing. I grew up. I will go with you wherever you go, because the seed of what you did grew into a flower and created a beautiful and immense garden. This is where I speak to you from. Every day, every second, full time. I don't give up on love. I don't give up. And I return to the photograph and my finger goes down from your mouth to your chest, up to your hair and when it reaches your arms, my mouth rests again on your worn paper lips and I press you all against my chest, so that you can hear, wherever you are, like a tuning fork, a metronome, the rhythm of my heart trilling snowgoose solfeggios for you. And your photo gives me the necessary lamirés so that the beat remains in the chosen music.

I may lack bread, I may lack friends of flesh and blood, and I may even grow in anguish that I will prune, as I can, and I may even have a lot of answers left over, for questions that I never dared to ask, but what I have most left over is the question from my eyes to yours: how did you forget the way home?

In reply to your request
Please find, I hereby protest
To the ways and means you use
You know I cannot refuse

So I'll take this vow of loyalty
Fight for the right
You have said to be free

When this time has run its course
I must live without remorse
For the deeds I'm bound to do
I know it's all the same to you

But I won't forget the memory
Taking a life for a life
To be free