Cigarettes and Flowers

I enjoy you like a cigarette:

Staining my fingers and my lungs black,

Being a fire hazard

Knowing how much you'd love to make me smile, but you're just too much cancer.

I'd love you killing me slowly

Messing up things inside of me that I didn't know existed

Being the most relaxing unfortunate and ill-spent five minutes of the day

Investing on an early death and atrocity

Poisoning the air for me and everyone else around me

Being so void yet so important, 

So unnecessary and expensive but I can and I will keep you

Because I'm more stubborn than that

And I never knew how to quit.

I'd love you to comfort me

Consuming yourself slowly into my hands

Giving me your all while I believe myself that I live for you when

We were actually taking each other's life away slowly

Because that's how it is

And being together could never have been any other way.

I'd love you like the flowers withering away

Though they were for one frozen instant, so bright and perfect

They were all that I would see,

While I confidently ignored the unpleasant sight that surrounded them, never facing reality, 

Because this life is a pest and the world a graveyard or a hospital

And flowers are the etiquette for the sick, the only remembrance of beauty and the only thing that matters amidst the chaos.

I'd love you beautiful and soft, I'd love your smell and your looks. I'd be so careful -if I ever dared to touch you- because I'd never want to ruin you petals, even though I know well that you were doomed from day one to grow dry and bitter and die, like we all end up doing once and for all, after many instances along the way that a little bit of life was lost or given up each time.

Relentless as it is, our time is short and precious. That is why I can't help but to feel delight in this very moment, as you rest by my side and let my hands roam on your softness, as true as this breath I take in to inhale you.

Lil' Ms. Blue

Si la hubiera buscado, no la hubiera hallado.

En cada eco de esa risa, en la potente luz de sus días,

En cada declaración grandilocuente,

Despojada de sensiblerías y delicadezas

Como una preescolar treintañera

Sumergida en su mundo adulto.

Llegó una madrugada de verano

Casi sin anunciarse.

Sin dolores de parto y sin romper la fuente.

Sin ser nunca "criatura de brazos":

Apenas nacía, ya aprendía a volar.

Creció en un santiamén.

Pareciera que en vez de comida,
se alimentara de filosofía, arte, ciencia e historias.

- ¿Me puedes comprar ese pollo? Preguntaba mirándome con sus grandes ojos de avellana.

- No. No puedo.

- ¿Por qué?

Cuestionaba.

- Porque no traigo dinero.

Pero ella no es de las que toman un "no" como respuesta.

Lo mejor que se le pudo ocurrir, fue acercarse a desconocidos en la calle y pedirles dinero para comprar su pollo.

Acto seguido, se acercó a la mesita en la banqueta,

Donde había hileras de pollitos de cuerda de colores.

Eligió el que le pareció mejor y mirando hacia arriba,

Buscó los ojos del vendedor

Y viéndolo directamente,

sentenció con tono serio y decidido:

"Quiero ese pollo. Cueste lo que cueste".

Desde ahí supe que no habría berrinches.

No es rebeldía ni "cosas de la edad".

Es parte de quien ella es.

Nunca fue un ave de mañana.

Ni oveja del rebaño.
Es edición limitada, no genérica.

Puedo ver en ella las tardes tranquilas y a mis abuelos en su jardín

A su familia paterna, a sus tíos subiéndola en hombros como torres de dos metros.

Veo al noble pediatra, su tío, atendiéndola cariñoso

Veo a sus maestras, sus libros en inglés,

Las actividades extraescolares

En un colegio que no hubiéramos podido pagar.

Ella es el eco de los viajes, de las tardes que pasamos juntas, de mi suplicio y tristezas, de las pequeñas grandes alegrías subrepticias de nuestra otrora existencia simple.

Y toda la belleza de los días que aunque se esfumaron,

Le dieron a ella parte de su identidad

De ser esta gran mujer.

A veces me recuerda tanto a mi, pocas veces a su padre,

Ella es una conjunción de mundos

Y fuerzas misteriosas.

Ella es su propia voluntad.

No necesita de nada ni nadie para estar completa.

Va mucho más allá de ser una versión de alguien.

Ella se sabe viva y despierta.

Es mucho más de lo que yo jamás le pude dar.

Si la hubiera buscado, no la hubiera hallado.

Con su carácter de café negro y su sonrisa de mar.

Nadie como ella para decirle "hija".

Nadie como ella para llamarme "mamá".

Soledad

Andaba mirando en los aparadores toda esa ropa divina que podría comprarme para usarla nunca, pues siempre estoy en casa en piyamas.Y me dirigí al supermercado, a buscar los ingredientes para todas esas recetas que descargué, pero que nunca voy a preparar, porque son para dos o más personas, y yo estoy sola, además que como dijo Gabriel, "las recetas te valen madre; siempre cocinas como te da la gana".

Fire. That's what happened that day. Just a tiny sparkler, nothing too fancy, no evident danger. Yet, the day they came into my life became engraved in my memory, a fire never to go extinguished, but that was meant to grow instead and get out of control at times while being still so perfect and beautiful and bright. My own fire. I could not help, but to love them.

The first one was a cannonball. Roaring into my arms and taking up things. Unstoppable. My will to live and my failed dreams embracing her alike, for one thing about cannoballs, is that they're loud and they wreck. They change the landscape and they make good teachers. All beauty and colors, all suphur and death and new life. My cannon ball, she's truly the love of my life, because ever since she was born, loving her has been the work of my life.

The second one, came in a dark, quiet evening. So unwilling, my M-80 ready to blow like a ticking bomb. He used to love to sleep. The dormant gunpower I didn't mind keeping in my bed. I didn't mind. Now he's a firecracker, spining around, bursting in colors, alive and awake. He's no longer asleep. And I enjoy the buzz, I'd embrace him curling upwards in endless sparkles, making me dizzy and awed and scared all at once, then making a nasty bang, like a gun going off.

The gun I love. The cannon ball I love.

The fireworks that I would never want any other way, which no ordinary flashlight could ever be. 

No flashlights for me.

But now, my fireworks are gone. I guess that's the price for being that special. 

And I miss them. I miss their fire and their beauty, the precise balance required just to keep it safe.

Just to enjoy their grandiose light flashing amidst the dark.

The Eyes of Azael

Have you ever fantasized about clutching someone's eyes in your hands?


The Eyes of Azael (Horror mini-story)

30 de septiembre de 2013

A veces estás donde nadie más podría estar. Entonces mi corazón deja de ser mío por un momento y late solitario en un mundo de mil ensoñaciones -todas ellas trágicas y hermosas- mudas y ligeramente salpicadas de dolor. 
Eres a veces lo único. Perfecto y absoluto en el plano de lo imposible, viviendo en gotas de sal
Que se cierne en laberintos sin salida 
Que saluda a la Luna solamente de día 
Que amo tanto sin saber por qué.
Yo sé bien, aunque quieras no puedes abrazarme:
Cuando crees tenerme entre tus brazos, en realidad estoy perdida
Lejos del sueño que para ti alguna vez fui.

Role Model

"You shouldn't be like me" I'd tell her, "You're far more intelligent and prettier. You are not old, like me".

...And "being old" is not about being thirty, you know? Being old is about giving up on ourselves to become adults. It's about feeling numb and knowing all the answers. Because love and joy and happiness are unproductive and consume too much time. And, when one is old, one's always running out of time. Until you finally do run out of time.

Sometimes I had to brush my hair: The little one would come up to me and hand me the brush; then, she'd hand me the lipstick and a mirror. "I like it when you style your hair and paint your lips, mama", she'd say. "I'm not your mama", I would reply. "Oh, I know you're not my mama. But since my mother is at work and I am here at school, I have no mama here, and I don't want to be motherless. So can I call you mama?" Finding no valid reason to decline, I complied. Then she'd stand right in front of me, hand me the lipstick again, and tilt her head while giving me an intended look, pointing at her lips. She loved it when I pretended to do her lips with my lipstick.

"Why is Camille crying? -I asked my protegée- She says you took her cookies; is that true, dear?" "But of course, I didn't!" She responded, matter-of-factly. "That would be mean," said she, with a mischievous grin impossible for me to ignore, "Besides, I have no need to be taking anyone else's stuff. I have all the cookies in the world"... "Oh, that's great! -I said- then, you won't mind sharing some of these with her".

But the best of all was the surprise hugs. Those that came out of nowhere almost squeezing the life out of me. Except, she's tiny and such a thing would have never been possible. She said she could hug me better than her "real mama" because "She's chubby and I can not really wrap my arms around her". And then she'd add: "I'd like to be like you when I grow up". "You shouldn't be like me" I'd tell her, "that's too low for you; you're far smarter and more beautiful".