A Last Cigarette with Neptune

 

Anxiety is a hairy, coarse, and hungry animal.

I tell my brother to stop eating the way he does, for two and three, because I know that his hunger is called anxiety, fear, dread, worry, and has everything to do with the future. That it does not belong to us. We can see this from the election results. There are no miracles. We are mirrors with legs and arms and we serve, in the last resort, so that others can look at themselves and see themselves, in our defects and traits. I am also anxious, fearful, in fact, terrified. We both have a weak, fragile, vulnerable and elderly mother. We both know that the future carries a question mark that causes us uncertainty, but we also know, in the worst way, from the successive mournings we have experienced since childhood that, after a question mark, there will come disappearance, detachment, pain, inability and impotence to contain the flood of emotions of our moon that translates into loss. And we, he and I, have already experienced the pain of losing the sun, the loss of Jupiter, our youngest brother, and then the loss of our grandparents, the rest of our relatives and close friends. Losing is, for us, the pain of being unable to overcome death. For them, it is liberation from the yoke, from the game, from the life that always deceives us, that always distracts us, between this and that! There we will fall, in that petty and acute pain, until time and salt eat away with us the lack of the moon, any moon, be it good or less of a moon or more mercurial or more Uranian or Plutonic. What does it matter what we call our pain, if it is always dark and cold, if it is always sudden and thieving?

I'm trying to quit smoking. Antero also wanted to, he should have, he could have, but our willpower is not up to par with the anxiety-ridden gymnastics we do to cope with life's vicissitudes, the juggling acts that unfold at times, when we try to get our mother to eat one more pudding, one more dried fruit, one more soup, one more pasta, one more yogurt, and with her it's everything less, less of all that and more of detachment, less of what she needs and more of political debates, of Júdice, of Marcelo, of Gouveia e Melo, in short, of the messages from Mercury that have always surrounded her, to our Gemini mother. Yesterday I dreamed that I was nestled on a high hill, full of wild flowers, next to me were Rocky and Kirie, and behind me, a familiar figure told me to put my hat on my head, while I picked marigolds. I wanted to lie down and roll around there, but there were brambles and big ants. To roll down the hill, while the sun shone, high up there and be able to see the lofty blue sky, with balls of white lamb's wool, marking, like little compasses, my divine path. A bag of wild flowers and my throne for the calming of my heart, for the reduction of the anxiety that will bring us unbearable pain. Then, I remember the wounds of the world, the ethnic cleansings that occur in the open air, with our complicity and silence, and, before I know it, I've already smoked the whole pack of cigarettes. Next Sunday, we celebrate the birthday of our Moon. It will have been circling the Earth for 81 years and it will have been circling me for almost fifty-seven years, showing me all the coordinates that I should not cross, telling us both that we have had enough fun, Mom, I love you, I love you very much, in those delicate skins of your hands, in that smile you offer your grandchildren, in that cynicism about the political scene, and even in that refusal to eat. Mom, where do all the loves go, when they detach themselves from our skin and shake off our horizon? Mom, what color are the dreams when we think we have reached a place that we believe is the goal? Mom, why did they invent absence, if only this now exists and commands us? Mom, I don't want to see you go, I have said it many times, more times than I asked to go too, while listening to Maria do Rosário Pedreira's poem. I know that physical death is relief and surrender to the platform of evolution, but Mom, could you stay with us a little longer, please? Shall we re-plan our schedule, keep the deal we made last year to travel to Greece? Mom, shall we go to one of the many dances with an orchestra and dance until we're tired, sit down and laugh like drunks with joy? Mom, I want to give up cigarettes, but they won't let me go, and my brother is eating his emotions without looking at them, and we are what we eat. Mom, you don't eat anything, so you disappear. Mom, why didn't you stop smoking before? Oh mom, I miss those funny jokes you can still tell me and then you keep quiet, the stories from your childhood that, when you tell them to me, are also mine, oh mom, will you let me know before you leave, so I can prepare myself? Mom, one last cigarette before I get up to life, to kiss you or slap you for being suppressive or complacent with human pain. Today we're going to the doctor again. Not just any doctor, but specialists who have devices to read our insides, to analyze the strange cells that, without prior authorization, circulate within us and reproduce like animals in heat. Mom, I'm going to order the fruit cake we all like, so that on Sunday we can sing and dance Happy Birthday to you. Now, saving the text, I push the blanket away, as if pushing life itself, which covers me, and open the window. The birds that live outside sing, but not on your birthday, because it's bad luck to sing before. And I smoke what I say will always be the last cigarette in the pack.