I always come back to you

 

I returned to Santa Francesinha and then also returned to the garden, savouring every patch of land, every flower, every image, as if savoring a beautiful bowl of ice cream. I sat on the bench opposite the old Portucalense University, of which only the building and the stones remained, where I had to chew yogurt blindfolded while another freshman offered it to me, in my mouth, in my eyes, in my hair—in short, until I gave up on this ridiculous practice.

One day, leaving the original Guedes, you and I, after having savored a delicious seafood feijoada with the boy, entered the garden and I looked at him, as if gazing at the future, ours that coexisted, only and solely, in that brief moment of my contemplation, with a full stomach and a soul filled with the lightness that assured me that that time was already there, nearby, where your face took over everything and the boy's adventures always, and necessarily, passed through a new timbalom, a stretched skin, some brooms, a double pedal, a modern drum kit that could contract in sound between the walls of a cork room that muffled his breaks but didn't prevent his creativity from expanding, if that was what he wanted. That mine was to look at you and hold you, to kiss you and embrace you, to be content with a half-mast smile when you had time for us, that your life was that of a slave, always working so that nothing was missing. I saw the people and the buildings, some alike and others not so much, so many doors open and so many closed to a future that was fulfilled in other latitudes, in other forms, escaping what was previously planned, the structure that was being prepared at that time. I remember John Lennon, who said life happens while things are being planned, and Mafalda Veiga, singing "Old Man," and a compassion welling up within me, as if aging were a fatal illness, the forgetfulness that time wrought upon us, the verbs that resembled gigantic waves of bad weather, those expressive tsunamis, of the gerund or future in conjunctive, daring to occur in the pluperfect past, not accepting linguistic temporal impositions, and I who dreamed that we were and would continue to be, but the dream had already been shattered, perhaps without my realizing it, the moment after I dreamed it. I saw the wisterias showing their exuberance, the imperfect loves delighting the eyes of passersby. Did that dream die within me, or did I cease to inhabit it? Could that have been why it never materialized? Neither the taut drum skins, nor the cymbals, nor drumsticks, nor smiles, only portraits, gaps in the time that had ended, and I stubbornly remained afloat, alone, with the expression of nostalgia that rhymed with the joy that had once made me a woman and a mother. Where had I lost myself? And that old man in Mafalda's voice was me and all the selves that had inhabited me until I met you, and all the future selves, weighing me down, sitting there with me, on that bench saddened by winters, but kept red to remind us that the cold can be a fire that keeps the heart burning secret thoughts, when aligned with our idealized self. And I was that old idealist, animated by the fire of the spirit, by the passion of the divine, cherishing all the selves, past and future. I was the mother of the garden spirits who now dedicated the right time to reflection and the solitude necessary to achieve balance and the structure of materialization. Wood, fire, flowers, and birds, that etherealness of who you were and the musical seasoning of the breeze that comes to ruffle my hair, the water of the small lake swelling the emotions that survived the apparatus of the years and the blow of the materialization of others, and your image comes to add the chords to this afternoon that falls, sepulchral, where none of the beings that share what I see can guess my higher desires, which I surrender to the garden and disappear into the warm car, with the ticket still within the two hours allowed, that I do not allow myself to infringe, to myself, and I go, almost barefoot, almost gracefully, while I concentrate on driving, on the CD, the camels playing "you are the one" and I take off the flip-flops from my feet and only if the police stop me will I be certain I deserve a misdemeanor. Otherwise, it will be me walking up Fernão de Magalhães Avenue and you descending to the garden of delights, where one day you will meet me by chance, you will tell yourself it was by chance, you will look at the clock and see six eighteen on the screen, and you will sit as if it were twenty years ago, molding the hands of the drumsticks, studying the pattern of my fingers on your fingers, you will listen to an old song you taught me and the moon will take over the garden, the street, your hand will rest on mine, between yesterday and tomorrow and I will no longer drive barefoot and the grace that God assured me existed will arise within me, this one mine alone, that of looking into your mismatched eyes and no castle will crumble, and all tsunamis will be permitted and allowed, in the passion between our smile and your musty skin, between December and August.