"... look for me in Rotterdam, write me even if I do not leave."
Eugenio Montejo, Partida.
Leave. Leave affections behind: I don't want to leave, I swear. I resist this destiny, which like any destination, is a way to die live. How do you live away from affections? I'm leaving because it's better than not doing it. How unpleasant it is to choose between the homeland and the airplane terminal. Mariana follows me in my sadness; our sadness has chartered the luggage. Mariana is languid, transparent. She worries about her parents and her younger sisters. But the decision is already made. In August was the trip. Destiny is not the arrival, the uncertain beginning, the tortuous march to resignation: "Do not call us, we contact you", "we have seen your resume, without doubt you are qualified for the position, but right now our priorities are focused on raising production, do not call us, we contact you ... ". Only the mop remains, the last door. Dirty money, an espresso, an onion soup at noon, a subway ticket, the brown converse, a striped jacket (blue, faded), jean that matches the jacket, a balaclava and black gloves. Thus will pass the days that later become months; that is how the swirling winters will come, like cold knives, like the icy anger of God. Leaving knowing what awaits beyond, on that other shore different, distant, cold. Sometimes, especially at night, I hear Mariana's quiet cry on the balcony. She does not imagine that I listen to her, but yes, I do; I also cry a little, I cry for me, as she cries for her (will it be that we cry for both?), will she hear me? It does not matter anymore, it does not matter. This regret is becoming more direct, without restrictions. What do you play in those intimate cries, in those little niches of the house, where you cry? What is the fiber of the game? All goodbye is always goodbye; the instants are lost, they do not return. I respect her privacy and her sadness.
The emptiness of the emigrant
When at night Mariana cries, when her dry and drowned crying goes on, a clean sadness invades me. How to get rid of that cry? How to return the fresh and morning laugh? The trip, that goodbye that is approaching, is an established enemy, an ally of sadness. The eyes do not lie if they go straight. Mariana, who always speaks with her eyes, avoids seeing me. Avoid in the background the abrupt shock of our sorrows. She wants to simulate relief, relief of travel, of adventure; but we both know that sadness can't be avoided: the forms of goodbye are always the same, they are always one: sorrows to the soul.
Gone with the sadness
A bullet, a departure, a country. Mariana, the whole night, the memories, mom watching the novel, dad watching the soccer game, the narrow corridor of the building, the shorter and sad friends (with other years on top), a ball in the middle of the ground in front, crossed legs that I will never see again. My grandmother in the rocking chair, the wind hooting in the wall of the second floor, an old wind, the nights of the aguaitacaminos ("come tomorrow for salt!"), anise with lemon, she, the others... everything is left behind, the memories belong to a time and a space. Mariana will have her own; those do not go with us, they are misplaced between the good-byes and the sobs. Every game is a form of loneliness, ways of dying a little.