Always Doesn’t Seem Like Such a Long Time, After All

His beard, grown as camouflage for a dove,

curves around the smile that widened just for me.

Gentle fingers squeeze hard between my ribs

for the photo, pull me in tight, make me gasp.

Taken, poof, in a rainbow-bursting flash of sunlight.

Sundering

She sits as his last breath rises. His soul, energy, life-force hovers goodbye. No, she says. Rising, it disperses, turning into universe. No, she cries, how will I know you? Out near another galaxy it flinches. Gathers. Returns. Reenters her atmosphere. Ignites.

One Heart Breaking

Splinters rasp. Pancreas.

The word cracks

it open.

The surgeon’s voice echoes

months

in a thunderclap

straight down the middle.

Your last sigh, exhaled,

broke it forever.

Yet, listen. Days like today

I can hear it

sounds like pebbles

at the seashore.

 Pep  13/8/66 - 16/6/03

Always for you, Pep.  143

          Answer #14 was also           

Workout Routine

   A handful of classes away from zipping up those jeans, I sashay through the aerobics routine. The blasting disco beat keeps my mind clear as fog. I can’t hack the end, though. This five-minute silence on the mat just keeps killing you.

Where does it hurt?    Answer #16

Dust

Vase                      full

of once-red roses

years browned, perfectly

dried. Plucked, all twelve of

them, from the very

expensive flower

arrangements

left  in  the

basement

of the

cr

em

at

ori

u

m

Polvo

Florero                       lleno

de rosas, en su día rojas,
volviéndose, hace años, cada
 vez más marrones, perfectamente
secas. Arrancadas, cada
una de las doce, de los
carísimos arreglos
florales dejados
en el sótano
del
cre
m
at
o
ri
o

Rapture at 101Fiction, #Issue3

The first full day of Spring seems like a good one to put up the link to my story at 101Fiction's #Spring #Issue3

               Rapture

I'll get up a translation soon. There are thirteen stories, all about Spring. And other things : )

What a World

I let my guard down and fell – whump! – in love with him. I landed like a ton of bricks -bricks made out of heartbreak, distrust, and misguided hope- that I carried around on my broad, squared shoulders. Nothing broke in the fall, nothing but a bit of cynicism and a few shards of jaded lens.

When I dusted myself off, I found there was love: a true love, sweet and all-consuming. Yet, while I let my guard down, I kept my defenses up. He gained privileged access, but the rest of you remained on the other side of my white picket fence, where I gazed on you with suspicion, sniffed at your pretensions, and muttered behind your backs.

I nurtured our allies, rallied against those of you who would scorn or cold-shoulder or taunt. I was happy, self-satisfied, content. I had a plan and the means to fulfill it. I didn’t need you. I needed no one.

He though! He needed nothing but what he could give away: to me, to you, to anyone. He closed his door to nothing, to no one, and then something deadly strode in. It didn’t kill love or trust or hope, but it did kill him. In the killing, it taught him nothing, but I learned, finally, how to melt. At first it was just a meltdown, a crying jag that went on in the subway and at the gym, in the shower and at the coffee shop. Then it began softening my hard edges, rendering my layers permeable until I could take you all in, let you under my skin, and, like him, see you, hear you, feel you.

Then he left, and I, like the Wicked Witch of the West, melted away. (What a world! What a world!) And instead of sneering at Glinda, at her goody-two-shoes, I tried them on. They didn’t fit very well, and made me walk with a limp, but I learned to tread lightly, and to lead with a wand.

333 words for , including MELT (transitive verb) 3: to make tender or gentle :  soften

10 March 2003 (Time Travel)

Rising from this autumn solstice, I step onto the path I wore thin. My heart flutters with the scent of lilac and my need for your surgeon to say We got it all.

33 words for  who urged us to time travel and specify the year. I, of course, travel to Pep. 1-4-3

The Seventh Chakra

They were alone in the loft, the light fading. Someone had told her the soul leaves the body through the crown of the head. She spoke, her soft words his last tether, unraveling.

33 words for, including tether, crown and loft.

Summer Was

Summer was
the end of faxes and phone calls.
Was your face at the airport.
That night on the seawall.
Your liking Sam Adams.
Our perfectly blue day
and the gently rolling sea.

Again, and always, for Pep. 143

13/08/1966 - 16/06/2003

Summer, in 33 of my own words, for 

The Illusion of Knowledge

For Pep, in memorium

How foolish to trust the moon,

– la luna, luna, luna –

which gypsies know for a liar

and a thief of small boys.

How fully I trusted the moon

– la luna, luna, luna –

to hold you in my gaze

and reflect you in my eyes.

Full moon over water dances

as in a foundry shimmering

with love, her light gathering

you and me

our separate yearnings.

Serene moon,

discreet guardian of all

that was tender and new.

Delicate us.

And, oh, how she,

tremendous,

lily white, rose

over the placid harbor.

In her magnificence the moon

– la luna, luna, luna –

called me to you and –

I imagined, implored, ordained –

called you to me.

‘Shoo, moon, moon, moon’

I should have said,

but I was not jealous and did not fear

treachery. She was

our depository, our safeguard.

Untrustworthy moon.

– la luna, luna, luna –

She could have held you,

kept you, let me gaze upon you still.

Lily white she rises.

– la luna, luna, luna –

temptress of little boys,

spinning tales like silver rings.

I gaze in vain, despairing

and yearning, unsay your name.

 This week's community-judged   word is LIGHT (noun) 3: a source of light: as: a: a celestial body; b: candle;  c: an electric light

Epiphany

   “Isn’t it strange,” you said, looking at me as if I personified strangeness, “how we fall in love with such unexpected people.” You ran one long finger down my nose. “There’s not a bit of logic, no reason to it at all.”

   I laughed my jaded laugh and said, “Speak for yourself. It’s obvious why I fell in love with you. I’ve never known a man so good, so kind.” I smiled and smiled at you, but you looked at me with an expression that felt like disdain. The subject changed, we made love, we fell asleep. All the next morning I was dogged by that look of yours. I was still pondering what could be wrong when I started out to meet you in the square. Something about that balmy winter midday made me cut through the park and stop at the little bridge over the artificial pond. As I looked over the darkly green pool, I felt a tremor run through me, though there was no breeze, just the sun’s jagged reflection off the still water. Some deep-rooted alchemy was causing a seismic shift in my core. Then it settled.

 

   Later, you were loping towards me outside the train station, smiling your bright, sunny smile.

   “Remember what I said about loving you because you’re such a good man?”

   You still smiled, but less so.

   “That’s not quite true.” I said.

   Your smile was almost gone.

   “I would have fallen in love with you even if you were a wife beater or a serial killer, because that’s how crazy true love is. I just lucked out, is all.”

   Your smile exploded. You tried to whisk me off my feet and we almost fell to the ground in a flapping, quivering pile. You were like a big puppy that way, a big Saint Bernard puppy whose whole body could exude happiness. Allowing myself to inhabit your waggling hug, I marveled at how simple it turned out to be to make someone else happy.

333 words, including the one  wanted: ALCHEMY (noun)  3: an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting

A Dabbler's Tale

Artists call them happy accidents. A blob of cobalt blue grabs onto the paintbrush when you were dipping into the cerulean, turns into an awesome lake below that Provençal sky, and rocks the watercolor landscape. Never mind that you were going abstract. The painting has a life of its own.

So it is when this guy you have lined up for a quick fuck turns out to be Prince Charming. You make a grab for the red lace but end up with a maternity bra and elastic-waist undies. Mortgage, braces, college tuition. You wish you could say you’d had it planned, but we all know you just caught a lucky break. And of course you flaunt it. Who wouldn’t? Only someone who’d actually deserved it would be humble and self-effacing. Not you. In your face, betches.

Now, and here’s the unforgiveable part, you’ve bought it, hook, line and sinker. Benevolent universe bestows wealth of love and inner peace upon walking disaster. What’s not to love? So you begin fiddling with the cornerstones of your life, changing the very shape of your existence to reflect this incomprehensible gift. It’s scary, but Prince Charming is right next to you, laughing his ass off, setting out the cement mixer and stacking up the bricks.

You forget about the things artists don’t mention. Some are called Canvas in the Fireplace or Manuscript in the Toilet. Others have headlines like Barbiturates in the Vodka or Razorblades in the Bath. Prince Charming’s oncologist called it the Luck of the Draw. You can call it anything you want, though. It’s still just the fat lady singing.

So, the landscape you were painting goes all abstract on you. The sky that’s supposed to be cerulean turns a yellow paisley, and the lake you want to drown in skates away, leaving skid marks on the checkerboard floor. When all you ever hear anymore is one long, sad aria, there’s nothing left to do but yawp that fat bitch off the fucking stage.

 

 

Exactly 333 for who offers us LUCKY (adjective) 3: producing or resulting in good by chance : favorable

 

Time

No one actually says ‘It’s time’. No one has ever said those words to me. In fact, people are still hesitant to send me pictures. They’ll email a scanned photograph from his childhood, adolescence, youngmanhood and excuse themselves.

Sorry, they say, we don’t want to open up any wounds.

What wound? I think. Oh, this gaping hole?

Don’t worry, I reply, the picture is sweet. I love it.

They cannot imagine this wound ever healing.

Once a friend told me a friend of hers felt a huge relief at finally scattering the ashes. She looked hard at me. She smiled. I made an attempt to smile back. I nodded my head. I’m guessing she bit her tongue, because she never mentioned time.

At first it is the hours that pass, then the days. Weeks, let’s be honest here, nobody marks time in weeks. Weekends, maybe; Fridays or Mondays. (You’d be surprised how weekends can lead you to understand certain religious concepts like purgatory and limbo.) Months, seasons, a year. The days marked off as firsts. First non-birthday, first light bulb changed, first holiday, first appliance broken down. One day you realize you haven’t cried for two days in a row. Another day you realize he’s been gone longer than you were together.

Still no one uses time to accuse me. They talk about how long it’s been, can’t believe it. Sometimes they will look at me – I can read the look – but still no one ever suggests that it might be time. They cannot imagine. It might even be on the tips of their tongues to say, Found someone new?, wishing to see me happy so they could stop being terrified. Then their look softens. They cannot imagine. I could tell them, but I don’t. It will never be time.

   TIME (noun) 3a : an appointed, fixed, or customary moment or hour for something to happen, begin, or end

Personification

All the things that had been his and were now hers settle like deadweight on her chest. She waits for the clouds to lift them off, beguile her with puppy dogs and dragons.

We want you to give us a 33-word example of personification.

Though Nothing

[Happy 66th to David Bowie]

His intention was always to embrace heroism, but on a small scale, in his own eyes. No fireman’s hatchet for him, no distinctive, transformative cape, no white stallion. With calm precision, magical equanimity and grace, he held gazes, held out his hand, held the broken pieces together. When sirens screamed in the street, he rose and strode down the hall to check that the baby slept, undisturbed by the wailing city.

A scar hidden under his dark beard, at the corner of his smile, belied the menace of his tall, sturdy frame. He never knew what hit him, or why. He raised his eyebrows when he told the story, heroically.

His version of derring-do, his quixotic jousting, was driven by the pleasure of the challenge, the glory of fighting City Hall. His heroics before the IRS, Unemployment, Social Security offices demanded that he scale mountains of rhetoric, redacting manifestos and espousing Man’s Inherent Right to lay claim to fair practice, fair price and the disabuse of power.

In his transformation from mortal to hero, he became the essence of swashbuckling gallantry. He was a warrior for chivalry, a paradigm of consideration, the guardian of other people’s feelings. No, please. You first.

If a hero is a man who would argue with the gods*, then a man is a hero who is doomed to lose that argument. The gods have no reasons, and a hero is not allowed to save himself. He cannot erase the writing on the wall, nor can he reverse the progression of a relentless, determined adversary. He cannot turn water into wine; he cannot change the weather; he cannot stop time. He can only glance up as the light fades and quietly, nobly, say goodbye.

* (norman mailer)

    INTENTION (noun) 3a: what one intends to do or bring about, b: the object for which a prayer, mass, or pious act is offered

 Bowie, Heroes:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejJmZHRIzhY

 

Be Careful What You Wish For

I wished for a loving man to make me happy.
I wished he would be faithful and kind.
And -why not- tall, dark and handsome.
I forgot to wish him into old age.

Trifextra: Thirty-Eight

We are asking you to write 33 words exactly about three wishes that come at a high price to the wisher.

Stairs / Escaleras

Fucking Stairs

Pigheadedness may well be the cause, but the one thing I do not feel is regret. Often I feel angry. Sadness I commune with daily. Lonely is my middle name. Regret? That is probably for the less pigheaded, those who leave room for doubt, attrition and fresh starts. I, in my pigheadedness, admit unapologetically to none of these. My doubts are more along the lines of what to make for dinner. Attrition I stockpile and then deploy only after a prudent period following the use of excessive volume and clarity in telling my eldest daughter the ways in which she can piss off. Fresh starts happen when you least expect them, and fresh is a relative term anyway. So is start, for that matter.

But you! More than a fresh start, you were like the Big Bang. From the moment of that first legendary kiss, we did everything quickly, decisively, definitively, like we were running out of time. Bang, we fell in love, Bang, we made a baby. Bang we bought a flat. Of course we knew there were four flights up and four flights down, that each flight had seventeen steps and that the baby, among other things, would need to be carried up and down them. But you were young. You were also going to be the one to make the neighbors see the inevitability of having an elevator installed. But me, all I needed was for someone to point out that the flat had no elevator in order to reply, hands on hips: “So what?” Any pigheaded comrades will recognize that succinct call to arms. I’d been a tomboy, a jock, a can-do feminist. What were four flights of stairs to me? If you had no problem with all those stairs, there was no way I was going to whine about it.

And let’s be fair. You were the one who stopped at the store almost every evening to lug up groceries. You were the one who brought down the trash when you left for the office in the morning. When people admired the plants on the terrace, you were the one who invariably replied, “yes, all that dirt came up on my shoulders, sack by leaden sack”. But you smiled when you said it, so I didn’t grow to hate you. I guess we were even proud of living with our stairs. Who needed elevators? All those cardiovascular benefits. No need to join a gym. And wasn’t the terrace lovely?

Bang, four and a half years go by and you need a back operation for a ruptured disk. Lucky we had that argument then, the one where I walked into your hospital room and you told me you were going to your parents’ house where you could take the elevator up and down to the street and there indulge in brief, restorative constitutionals, and I asked if you were just playing house with me and the girls, cause where would you have me, the love of your life, the mother of your child, go to recover from a ruptured disk operation, and you could damned well take your constitutionals on the terrace, pacing back and forth alongside the potted plants and trees whose dirt had broken your back in the first place, probably. I may be pigheaded, but I’m also often right. So we didn’t need to have that particular argument six months later, when it really, finally mattered.

But we’re not going to get that far in this little tale. We’re only going to go a few months further, to the day of the Fucking Stairs. I’d lived through the doctor calling your heartburn pancreatic cancer, though that was when my heart began trying to beat its way through my chest on a twenty-four hour schedule. I’d managed to avoid rending my clothes, tearing my hair out and damning the god I didn’t believe in throughout that terrible endless day of surgery, although I hadn’t managed to keep the promise of telling you exactly what the surgeon said. Pigheadedness only gets you so far.

There were many unsaid truths and untruths between us by the time we hit our stairs for the umpteenth time. I have to make up the details because they were so uneventful that I cannot recall the particularities at all. It is a safe bet to say that the little one -the one whom you would not see turn four- was fussing, maybe tugging, crying or just babbling, surely wanting to be lifted. Logic tells me I would be carrying things. The kid’s backpack, a bag of ecological groceries from the ComeBio store downtown. I assume you were somewhere between being strong enough to walk up and down without resting and having to sit for ten minutes at the top of each flight on the way up. (That was almost the fourth big fight we ever had - yet, even factoring in pigheadedness and a record for winning arguments, who was going to stand and argue before a man bent over himself at the top of the cold granite steps telling me to just go on up, you’d be there when you got there? So for once, twice, in my life, I bit my tongue and lost the argument. But that was later.)

Here we were in the middle of this flight of stairs, probably on step number thirty-six, when I distinctly heard myself mutter, “You are not going to die and leave me to deal with these stairs all on my own!” I like to offer myself the excuse of spending inordinate amounts of time alone at the computer, when not in the company of egocentric offspring who rarely listened to what I was saying unless the word chocolate was involved. But you stopped at step number forty-three, straightened your repaired yet aggrieved back, turned your head toward me and with a straight but uncompromising face said, “What?”

Here is where regret, were it going to insert itself into this particular equation, should have surfaced. Surface it did not. I silently repeated the phrase I had just uttered, testing its quality and capacity for damage or salvation, vacillating over whether or not to once again do this uncustomary, altruistic thing of biting my tongue, when I looked up to meet your equable gaze and remembered to be kind. I smiled, although I admit it may have looked more brave than loving or even kind-hearted, and chose my words more carefully.

“Well,” I said with just a hint of heartiness, “one of the reasons why I know you are not going to die is because you would never leave me all by myself with these fucking stairs,” I hitched the kid onto my hip, reclutched the grocery bag and breezed on up the last flight of stairs. “Would you.”

...

Jodidas escaleras

Bien puede ser por emperramiento, pero lo único que no siento es remordimiento. A menudo estoy enfadada. Comulgo con la tristeza a diario. Como que me llamo soledad. ¿Remordimiento? Probablemente sea algo para los menos tercos, los que dejan lugar a la duda, la atrición y para empezar de nuevo. Yo, emperrada y sin arrepentimientos, no doy lugar a ninguno. Las dudas que pueda tener son más bien del índole de qué hacer para la cena. Almaceno la atrición hasta poderla desplegar, dejando pasar un período prudente después de emplear un exceso de volumen y claridad al sugerir a mi hija mayor por dónde esfumarse. Los nuevos comienzos ocurren cuando menos te los esperas y, de todos modos, tanto nuevo como comienzo son términos relativos.

Pero, ¡y tú! Más que un nuevo comienzo tú te parecías al Big Bang. Desde el mismo momento de aquél beso legendario, hicimos todo rápida, decisiva y definitivamente, como si se nos acabara el tiempo. Bang, nos enamoramos. Bang, hicimos un bebé. Bang, compramos un piso. Por supuesto que nos dimos cuenta de que había cuatro tramos de escaleras, de que cada tramo constaba de diecisiete escalones y que el bebé, entre otras cosas, tendríamos que subir y bajar a cuestas. Pero tú eras joven. Tú, además, ibas a ser el que consiguiera que los vecinos vieran la inevitabilidad de la instalación de un ascensor. Y a mi lo único que me faltaba era que alguien mencionara el hecho de que el piso no tenía ascensor para responder, brazos en jarra: “¿Y qué?” Todos mis camaradas tozudos reconocerán esa breve llamada a las armas. Había sido marimacho, atleta, feminista consagrada. ¿A mi qué los cuatro pisos? Si tú no tenías problemas con todos esos escalones, ni loca iba a ser yo quien se quejara.

Y seamos justos. Eras tú quien pasaba por Condis casi cada tarde para subir la compra. Tú eras quien bajaba la basura cuando te marchabas al despacho por las mañanas. Cuando la gente admiraba las plantas de la terraza, tú eras el que invariablemente contestaba, “sí, toda esa tierra lo subí yo sobre estos hombros, saco a saco”. Pero sonreías mientras lo decías y por eso no llegué a odiarte. Supongo que hasta nos sentimos orgullosos de convivir con nuestra escalera. ¿Quién necesitaba un ascensor? Y los beneficios cardiovasculares. No hacía falta hacernos socios de ningún gimnasio. ¿Verdad que era hermosa la terraza?

Bang, pasan cuatro años y medio y necesitas operarte de una hernia de disco. Suerte que tuvimos esa discusión entonces, cuando entré en tu habitación de la clínica y me dijiste que irías a casa de tus padres, donde podrías coger el ascensor para subir y bajar a la calle y permitirte unos cortos paseos tonificantes, y te pregunté si sólo jugabas a las casetas conmigo y con las niñas porque ¿dónde querías que yo, el amor de tu vida, la madre de tu hija, fuera a recuperarme de una operación de disco herniado?, y ya te darías unos largos paseos en la terraza, por las hileras de macetas de plantas y árboles cuya tierra te había herniado el disco en primer lugar, probablemente. Puede que sea terca, pero a menudo también tengo razón. Así que no tuvimos que pasar por aquella discusión seis meses más tarde, cuando realmente, finalmente, importaba.

Pero tan lejos no iremos en este cuentecito. Sólo nos iremos unos cuatro meses más allá, hasta ese día de las Jodidas Escaleras. Había sobrevivido al doctor recalificando tus ardores como cáncer de páncreas, aunque fue entonces cuando empezó mi corazón a intentar traspasar mi pecho a latidos las veinticuatro horas del día. Había conseguido evitar rasgar mi ropa, tirarme de los pelos y maldecir al dios en quien no creía a lo largo de aquel largo y terrible día de cirugía, aunque no conseguí mantener la promesa de contarte exactamente lo que decía el cirujano. El emperramiento sólo te lleva hasta cierto punto.

Hubo muchas verdades calladas y medias verdades entre los dos para cuando volvimos por enésima vez a nuestras escaleras. Tengo que inventarme detalles porque era tan normal y sin novedad que no recuerdo las particularidades en absoluto. Las probabilidades son muchas de que la pequeña, la que no llegarías a ver con cuatro años, estaría quejándose, quizás tirando de mi pantalón, llorando o sólo charloteando, seguramente con la intención de que la cogiéramos en brazos. La lógica me dice que vendría cargada. La mochila de la nena, una bolsa de compras de la tienda ComeBio del centro. Supongo que estarías en un estado entre tener la fuerza de subir y bajar sin descansar y tener que sentarte durante diez minutos al colmar cada tramo de escalera. (Ésa casi fue la cuarta gran discusión que tuvimos nunca aunque, incluso considerando la terquedad y un récord de discusiones ganadas, ¿quién iba a quedarse de pie discutiendo ante un hombre doblado sobre si mismo en el último peldaño del tramo de fríos escalones de granito que me decía venga, sube tú, que ya llegarías cuando llegabas? Entonces por una, dos veces en mi vida, me mordí la lengua y perdí la discusión. Pero aquello ocurrió más tarde.)

Allí estábamos en medio de ese tramo de escaleras, probablemente en el escalón número treinta y seis, cuando claramente me oí decir en voz baja, “No irás a morir, no me dejarás aquí con estas escaleras ¡yo sola!” Me gusta ofrecerme la excusa de pasar un tiempo desmesurado sola ante el ordenador, cuando no en compañía de egocéntricas hijas que rara vez oían lo que decía a menos que incluyera la palabra chocolate. Pero tú te paraste en la escalera número cuarenta y tres, enderezaste tu espalda reparada pero aún agraviada, giraste la cabeza hacia mí y con cara de intransigente circunstancias dijiste, “¿Qué?”

Aquí es donde el remordimiento, si fuese a introducirse en esta particular ecuación, debería haber surgido. Surgir, no surgió. En silencio repetí la frase que acababa de soltar, sopesando su calidad y capacidad de dañar o de salvar, vacilando sobre si debería o no hacer esta cosa inhabitual y altruista de morderme la lengua, cuando me encontré con tu mirada ecuánime y me acordé de ser amable. Sonreí, aunque admito que habrá parecido más valiente que amorosa o siquiera bondadosa, y elegí con mayor cuidado mis palabras.

“Pues,” dije con una pizca de entusiasmo, “una de las razones por las que sé que no te vas a morir es porque nunca me dejarías aquí a solas con estas jodidas escaleras.” Aupé a la niña hasta mi cadera, agarré más fuerte la bolsa de la compra y subí sin más el último tramo de escaleras. “A que no.”

...

Enough

I read to you while you sat before your tray, chewing determinedly at the leg of chicken while I carefully, lingeringly, just short of happily narrated the story of Macondo and the Buendía family. Almost always someone would come in before you were done and I would fold the book around my right index finger in the vain hope that they would hold up in the doorway, smile and back out to let you finish, to let us finish, but eventually I would slip the red ribbon in the place held by my finger (forever now between pages 264 and 265) and put Gabo aside.

After the tray was whisked away and the pills dispensed and the shots administered, you would place your long fingers squarely over the arms of the chair and slowly unbend yourself into a standing wobble, reach out to give my shoulder a squeeze before you settled your feather weight on it for the slow, bathrobed shuffle along the busy corridor. Taking a right, down the longer way you would head first, nodding to the jaunty executive who trailed his wheeled drip behind him. As we crossed the nurses’ station you would smile at the young nursing aides, who would regale you with wide, surprised smiles of their own. Past the still noisy visitor waiting rooms, you would avoid the open doors of the elderly and the semi-conscious, turning around at the stairwell where you would often give me a kiss and lace your fingers through mine to head back up the home stretch to the opposite end of the second floor Palliative Care ward.

Your father would usually end your constitutional, hailing you from the doorway of your room: “Què tal un massatge, chato? Com tenim aquests peus?”, rubbing his hands with our almond oil as you settled back into the dingy brown armchair to pull up your pajama legs and lay your swollen ankles in my lap to let El Jefe work out his perplexity and fury on your calves and shins, purportedly to bring the swelling down with his energetic chafing.

Once he and whoever else who remained had straggled their way out, heartily encouraging your speedy recovery, I would curl up next to you for a few minutes, then run my hands softly over your shoulders and arms, your thighs and calves until your brow softened, your eyes began to droop and I could feel you relax. Then I knew I could leave you for the night. I would stand, press my lips to yours, collect my things, check your water, your pillow and edge toward the door. “¿Estás bien?” I would ask every evening with a warrior’s smile and wait for you to smile back and nod. But that night when I asked instead “¿Cómo te encuentras?” you raised your head, boring your eyes into mine with a look that was more defiant than tender, and clearly, emphatically replied: “Enamorado”.