New Sheets

Rain in that forsaken city seemed somehow dirtier. Or maybe it was just his state of mind.

In any case, it felt like each drop had been stained with the soot of all the dreams he had burnt to warm up the long winters, darkened with the shadows of all the people he hadn't become.

There had been a time, long ago, when rain had the texture of purity and nostalgia, as if it was a natural catalyst for that particular state of clarity in which he felt like he could grab that elusive masterpiece and tie it to his notebook. Of course, that might have also been a delusion, as the master piece never left the limbo of his imagination.

As the storm passed, he looked through the window and saw his sheets still hanging from the clothes-line, now drenched in a black and dense filth. He wrote down a note to buy new ones, and wondered if maybe he had given up more dreams than he thought.


Back to main page

…

Love is Noise

Love is noise. The noise of pleasure and wounded flesh, the sounds of the impacient belly where your head rests, and the murmur of bus conversations over a long distance call. The hammering of blood in your brain trying to scream ‘always’ and ‘never’ at the same time.

And if love is noise, the opposite to love has to be silence. Maybe that is why, since Hector gave me that last kiss on the forehead, like a child who deserves no explanations, I hadn’t been able to unplug my earphones. Before that, I had never found much joy in listening to music, defending with the conviction of a visionary that my brain worked better without distractions, like if my usual thoughts deserved anything more than a basic level of conciousness.

What I did not say then, not even to myself, was that distractions were already there, in the shape of a constant buzz made of doubts and fears. During the years I shared with Hector, I had always coexisted with hesitation. There wasn’t a single day I didn’t live with the possibility of leaving, weighing the pros and cons of solitude.

Smothered by my own arrogance, I had always assumed that I was the only one hearing that noise. Now that the innocent click of a closing door had eradicated all other sound, silence was unbearable.

For the tenth time tonight, I turned the volume a little louder and tried again to sleep.


Back to main page

…

13 Months

On February 15, a common acquaintance introduced them in some random party. When she saw him, Julia thought that he looked kind of ordinary, and Carlos found her gestures slightly phony. After a short and polite chat, each one went back to their dates.

A month later, Carlos was leaving the print of his hands in Julia’s skin, amazed by the way her neck curved when she was having an orgasm.

On June 15, a storm bent trees, damaged roofs and covered the city with a thick layer of mud. Carlos and Julia barely noticed all that. Their eyes were locked to the wall, exhausted after arguing over and over about the same silly details. They were sure that their story ended in that room.

That same day, three months later, Julia fell when running down some stairs. While Carlos was cleaning her wound as it was the most delicate operation, she told him that she loved him.

On November 15, Carlos met Julia’s family. Her sister blinked at him when she thought nobody was watching, and her father made a couple of racist jokes. Julia choked with the dessert.

On their anniversary, they talked about the whole year and toasted with champagne. Neither of them mentioned the boy for whom Julia almost left Carlos during Christmas.

Exactly thirteen months after they met, Carlos and Julia sat down on a bench at the park. Their fingers touched lightly, and they smiled.

Back to main page

…