Waiting for next summer

You are reading this on the bench in a square in Madrid, or Bogotá, or Mexico City, a square full of strange children who play as if the world were always going to be a carousel or a hammock, and all that happiness is offensive and painful because it is not yours.

You are reading this trying to cope - without much success - with the prospect of another weekend without plans, the long bridge of apathy stretched from Saturday to Sunday with the possible opaque salvation of Monday which, even so, is too far away.

You are reading this while the rats gnaw on the weak cables that still tie you to things while you drink coffee on an oilcloth tablecloth in a kitchen that overlooks the quiet part of the building and in which the aroma of dirty dishcloths floats.

You are reading this with fear of sleep - because of nightmares - and of being awake - because of nightmares - on a long journey towards the night that never comes.

You are reading this trying to feel something—affection for a cat, desire to read a book—but you feel nothing.

You're reading this while he left you, while she was gone, when they all died.

You are reading this swinging bitterly in the happy memory of a distant time of which only threads, a pair of shoes and an out-of-fashion dress remain.

You are reading this that does not speak to you or about you.

Which speaks of the fact that we all sometimes carry the same name without a surname, ancestral orphans, children of tears.

Today I went for a run late in the afternoon.

The southern summer departs with honesty, with beauty and lordship, glazes the treetops with its talented light.

Everything announces its end—the shorter days, the lower temperature—and yet running at this hour is still like swimming among goldfish.

A poem says: “There is a desert.

“There is another desert we call home.”

Homes fade away.

Only we are left.

It is better to stay, to go through the winter of our discontent waiting for the next summer.

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