Exclusive!

I saw him from time to time, alone, serious, cobating the morning coffee at the only sunny table in the bar where I also take the first dose of caffeine, and I cursed him softly for having taken away the best place.

He was an old man like so many, installed at that age in which the elderly who are forgiven by illness shine the most, if anyone bothered to look at them.

But he was different.

Unlike other parishioners, abducted like me by the cell phone, he looked at infinity and, at times, wrote things in a notebook like writing down the doctor's appointment so you don't forget.

Sometimes we exchanged glances and, then, I lowered mine as if caught at fault for invading the privacy of others.

Curiosity was piqued, of course, but the itch lasted as long as it took to vent the coffee with boiling milk,

get into the daily whirlwind and forget about the old man until next time, as what is important is relegated to what is urgent until there is no remedy.

Until today.

Today I have been the one who has caught the sun table and, engulfed with the mobile, I have not seen the scribe arrive until I have him on top.

I don't know how or why, he has called me by my name, he has apologized for his daring and his spelling mistakes, and he has asked me to please read his lyrics and tell him, without obligation, if they were worth it.

Look, my pulse trembled as if he had given me to read the talk of Juan Carlos I and Felipe VI in La Zarzuela for the first time.

The notebook was nothing of the other world, of course, but of this.

Notes of loneliness, nostalgia, dead friends and lost dreams, yes.

But also a very moving cry of longing for life and company written with the economy of means of those who take advantage of paper and ink to the micron.

On the TV in the bar

bored journalists commented on the umpteenth sneer scene of brothers-in-law of the homeland stoking hard in the government control session.

They gave me pain.

Sorry folks, but today's exclusive is mine.

Exclusive content for subscribers

read without limits

subscribe

I'm already a subscriber