The Cascade - Part 6

Read Part 5 here…

I do not even care about my foot hanging off the bed anymore, come get me demons. Bring me home.

Silva and the kids’ voices woke me up very early again. Ten of them now that little Estephan is born. We are packed in a two-room house and sometimes it is hard to breathe over everyone else’s breaths. Our priest, father Gaspar, talks about sharing. Not only look outside our own window but take a look to the ones next to us. We don’t even have a window. Not that I could use it, anyway. I just wish I could see more of the sky through the hole in the ceiling. Through the gaps in the wall, all of their sounds come in. Sometimes I have to go to the church to avoid them. They think I go there to pray to get better. I go there because no one talks.

Raindrops coming in are fine but they rarely wash away anything at all. I wonder how the sun feels. Some days it brightens my world, some days I had to be him to bring the light in. I still wonder about its shape. It cannot be any good or remarkable one since every night it dies to let the moon live. Maybe they did not get the instructions on how to do this thing called living right. Make it a never-ending harvest moon and I swear I could be these instructions myself.

I got out on the street again. I had to sell my map to buy bread and milk. The kids ate all of it in a day so I had to pretend I was full to avoid making them feel sad. They still do not know that feeling hungry is just another form of feeling empty and I have been a master of voids, ever since the day I was banished. I had notes on this map on how to get to the borders and then walk a few more miles until her village. We could live there together. But I had to give it up. I cannot take her out of here.

I am weird, I know. I cannot afford her. I am the black sheep, the odd duck, the reject, the lost and forgotten. I am me and this is hard on its own, but whatever the hell peace is, she is it. She does not do anything the right way. It is not her code. She reads books on the rooftop, drinks wine alone from the bottle and talks to the homeless like potential writers of her memoirs. She has mapped out how to conquer the universe together, one glass of wine at a time, one chapter at a time. At least, that’s how I think of her.

We would never squander time, we would constantly invent it from the start.

This civilization has failed me and my filthy shoes many times before. That is why I am counting on creatures outside of it to get me where I belong once again. I love them differently even more than the capacity of my blanket-bed on the floor allows me to love them. I love them that way because I do not want to lose them like I lost her wondering which was the right time to be myself. That is why I ended up to something I cannot wake up anymore. To something I cannot live with.

No, it is not the hunger, the lack of money, the shame I feel while trying to make some, sometimes it is not even the effect of longing for home has on me. It wasalways her. Those hazel eyes. I was always colorblind and my existence was described only by fabricated small talk on the lips of people who never saw in me nothing more than a failed attempt to stop loving what I loved alone. Do you think she lies awake at night missing me the way I miss her? He asked gesturing aimlessly.

I will steal Ricardo’s bed tonight. He is out with some girl. He is going to bring her flowers from a pot that used to be an ashtray. As I saw him walking out the door, I only hoped that the girl he was meeting knew the power of withered flowers and disguised pots. They can make a man stand straight and march confidently to what his heart commands.

Before blowing out my candle, I will pray for them.

To be continued…