Sunday, July 1, 2007

Haunting these blocks


About one year ago my mind became a ghost whose favorite perimeter is made up by these blocks. Torn between two worlds, it keeps wandering over here, although the school’s out and there are no frail students to haunt anymore, and the old tenants have decided to move away.

This area has a memory of its own. It’s like an attic where I have gathered up old dear things: kisses on sunny summer mornings, you playing the guitar in a language I had never heard before, your exams we prepared together, the sand you carried from the island in your big sandals… It’s all here, in this picture.

But the summer ended. And the cold November wind blew me like a leaf, further from you, to another street. In this picture, I can follow the road to the house where my mind is still trapped. Even if all its furniture is going to be sold in a day or two or it’s going to be given to old friends… I don’t have memories from here because my mind has always recorded them as eternally present facts: his well-ironed shirts, the cake he baked for me, the big books he had written, the clocks I could see from anywhere in the house. Each of my exits from his house was a genuine ceremony meant to keep his demons asleep: I was not allowed to leave angry and alone. Maybe this is why my mind is still haunting that place; my eyes are still looking at those dear things and my arms are still feeling his hugs. He is moving away, to a house I will never know. But my mind will continue living where he used to wait for me with his books shut…

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