Another planet?

He knew that he wasn´t alone on that planet and that, certainly, the objects were so similar to the ones from Earth. It was twenty-seven days after his ship crashed. No. It was twenty-seven days since he was awake. His watch stopped working but, considering the dried blood in his clothes and wounds, it seemed that it was more time.

No one had found him. Maybe no one searched.

He took a pallet from the water and left it at the beach for some days. Of course, he had already tried to escape, but the sea, which was always calm, swallowed all his boat attempts.

Another morning he saw two more wood pieces that were perfect for his nocturnal bonfires. He put them with the pallet and went for a swim; he needed to have his mind occupied and tire his body in other to be able to sleep at night.

A piece of cloth appeared in the afternoon, a perfect piece for a sailing boat. He didn´t have anything better to do so he built it with the pieces the sea had given to him. He went sailing. He didn´t take anything. He didn´t say goodbye to the stone from where was looking at the sunset every evening. He didn´t touch for the last time the shadow that looked like he. His confidence in being floating with those wood pieces for more than two minutes was null.

The two minutes turned into four. Then it was ten, twenty, forty... and when he realised, there wasn´t an island to get back.

He lost track of time after discovering that there wasn´t just one sun, but two.

He didn´t see the land. He just crushed with it. There were people. Many people. No one was surprised by him coming from the sea, some even asked him how could he arrived otherwise if not from the sea.

And then he saw them. His parents. The ones he had buried eight years ago. No, he wasn´t dreaming. He was dead. There. He was alive. Here.

There

No formality, taking the shoes off was enough, everything flowed. It didn´t matter what happened before, was that easy as feeling the sand between the toes. There, the body danced, no prepared movements at all. It was the freedom running through my veins; the life stripping my bowels. It was just the endless blue in front of me and no thoughts about tomorrow. Rosy cheeks for alienated words.

I know the time will go fast and I´ll be drunk by all those memories. I know, my fingers will stop the dance of tangled complicity, my skin will be wishing the spring. I know, it won´t be the same.

Maybe just another winter... maybe just another beach... maybe just my toes hugging a waterfall.

New house

She was used to the surprises related to living conditions in the houses she moved on, but she wasn´t sure how to define what happened that time. Nicole, considering her own experience in the rental market, had taken all the possible precautions towards what she was expecting as her final home. She visited the house calmly. She spent a weekend in the village´s hostel in order to talk with many neighbours as possible. They were all kind. She must have suspected a bit. The house was fine, maybe just some bedrooms to be repainted and two or three pieces of furniture to throw away. Everything seemed logical.

She bought it. After two weeks living there, she went back to her previous house to take the rest of her belongings. When Nicole returned, the dust, the moss, the spiders, the rats, and the leaks had eaten her new and happy home. The telephone number of the seller hadn´t existed anymore. Nicole checked every single house in the village: all looked the same as hers and there wasn´t anyone there.

Our "quarantine" before the coronavirus

So, as I was saying a few months ago, by the middle of January, the boiler in our house was kind of repaired (and I say kind because we were still having some problems but at least there were hot water and heating more often). Just after that, we discovered bedbugs in four bedrooms and had to put everything away so they could fumigate. At night, it seemed all fine and we started to unpackage our things… two days after, more bedbugs came to say hello!

This was Wednesday and our organization told us not to go to our volunteer places to avoid spreading the bedbugs (it sounds like quarantine and it was something like it)… Our house was going to be fumigated again with a stronger product and we were going to be allocated for some days in another house. We prepared a small suitcase but we couldn´t take any food, and so on we decided to spend the afternoon eating all our food together, it was going to be throw anyway.

And the adventure started…

On Thursday we had to put a complete set of clothes in a bin bag. We went to a launderette to have everything wash in order to kill any possible bedbugs we could have in. Our organization was in charge of everything, luckily. We had breakfast and recovered those clothes. We went to our organization's main centre to have a quick bath and dress up in clean clothes. Our shoes were cleaned by hand and were still wet. They took our coats.

A typical house in Studland

Afterward, we were supposed to go directly to this other house, but we made a stop in our “home”. We couldn´t take our small suitcases. The fumigators had already gone through it and communicated us the negative of being ever back… Thursday morning and you just have the clothes you are wearing and (a blind) confidence in the people around us.

They put some music in the minibus… it was less than an hour drive. Our “new” house was in Studland, a small village surrounded by forest and the sea, the place where we did our induction at the beginning of our volunteering. To be honest, an incredibly relaxing place where we were going to spend almost a week. They also bought us some food, we just had to wait.

Family dinner

She was sure that he was going to arrive late. Anastasia knew him perfectly but she was checking the clock due to the festive atmosphere. Her cousins were playing around the chairs and her aunts' screamings. The grandparents were changing from the political discussion to the nice memories of old times. Her brother was following her with his eyes with the certainty that she was keeping a secret and that was forbidden between them.

The girl with the curly hair was jumping in the kitchen from one side to the other thinking about where to start with the salad. Her mobile rang twice before she ran to take it until his brother could answer for her. She went to the garden and when she got back, she started to chop the onions, although they never had it in the salad.

Exile

Sailor on land
from this autumn

with abyss love.

Mermaids without songs,

screamings without voice,

howls.

It was the last tide,

insomnia at sunrise

from a forgotten winter.

Nights without shadows

bonfires without flames,

lies.

All starts are switched off

by a dark eternal footprint.

No more whispers

from hollow words.

Eyes without light,

heartbeats without a soul,

dreams.

Just remember it is fog,

my missing butterfly.

New Year's resolution

She had found it in the morning after destroying her bedroom. She didn´t remember to buy them but was pretty sure that had never gone to the street. So, when that night, between the wine and the turkey, someone asked her about the goals in the new year, she laughed before reassuring, with the seriousness of someone who had been drinking the whole day, that she was going to exercise daily.

Of course, she wasn´t expecting to start the same first of January at three in the morning, but there she was, in the middle of the forest with five degrees below zero screaming that she loved her new sport shoes and didn´t mind that were white and she was walking through the mad.

Hangover and body pain were also unexpected. She could dominate the first one after drinking a lot of water and taking some pills. She went running again to finish with the second one, in order to avoid too a longer headache if she had the opportunity to meet one of the other guests of the New Year´s Eve dinner. If she didn´t have any symptoms of the cold yet, it was because the virus was still working slowly.

The sign of being doing something wrong was, however, that she started to sleep like a baby. She couldn´t remember the last time she went to bed and didn´t spend more than two hours turning around the sheets, and punching the pillow until been able to stop her thoughts, or at least to feel that her brain was apparently resting.

She had to add fifteen minutes daily to her running routine to achieve the same effect. However, her sport shoes weren´t getting used to that activity as she was doing, and, after three weeks, the soles broke up.

By the first of February, far away from that New Year´s Eve dinner, she concluded the sporty resolution and started a new year with the determination of taking her decisions without the alcohol intervention.

On any of these timeless days

I miss

the distances

from walks that couldn´t happen,

from travels that weren´t anymore.

I miss

turning back

and not finding

anything else than barriers.

I miss

my blind words,

the innocent dreams

which controlled my mind.

I miss

when everything was true,

when the sky was crying

instead of us.

I miss

shouting to your face,

being able to hate you

because you are not visiting me.

I miss

the ignorance

of knowing that nothing has changed,

just grow.

I miss

the satisfaction of silence,

finding the confidence

in every complicity gaze.

I miss

being sure that fiction is happening

and this 'new reality'

is the real one.

Ambush

The sweat impregnated his clothes converting them into a second skin. He preferred that to the mosquito bites. Fernando was opening up a way through the branches doubting if he should be paying attention to the snakes and feel how one escaped from his eyes and bit him under the trouser. He had been there for twenty-seven days and thirteen hours. Five more journeys and would arrive if there weren´t major setbacks. Nevertheless, he had already managed to gain some hours from his estimations and had confidence in himself solving any other unexpected situation.

Those big blue eyes had studied the environment referenced in books for years and was finally exploring for the first time. However, he could just see the little oval picture kept in his pocket where a mother and a son posed smiling.

It had been twenty-three days without seen anyone. Fernando was used to spending long hours in his office without keeping human contact. There, the silence was stunning him; it seemed it was talking, never stopped even in the eternal nights.

It happened so quickly. A distant scream, some branches falling close to him, a delicate prick in his neck. His knees shook and he felt someone catching him from the back. Fernando was aware of someone following him but was always keeping the distance. His view got lost between the leaves that were hiding a clear sky further on. When his eyes could be opened again, maybe the stars would receive him.

To the city

When I was younger, I was really scared of what the Spanish people called "the turkey time". I thought that you literally turned into a turkey, so I spent hours looking at our farm hens and thinking which kind of creature they came from. However, my older siblings had already gone through the mysterious adolescence and no one of them had wings, just they got more stupid than normal, but I wasn´t sure that´s the main characteristic of turkeys. My grandmother told me that it was the price to become an adult, but that I probably wouldn´t need to pay because I was smarter and would know how to avoid it.

Then it was 'the travel'. For some reason that I was unaware of, by the time of finishing last year of school, each of my siblings spent a year with my aunt and uncle in the city. I barely knew them, they just came for a day in early summer to bring them back. I always received them enthusiastically, and somehow, they still loved me as brothers or sisters, but they seemed odd, as if any kind of alien had eaten their brain. They, all seven, had different studies and jobs, and they weren´t anymore the type of siblings I used to love spending time with.

So the last summer day when my parents put me on that bus to the city, I cried like a child. The grandmother didn´t understand why they also left me if I was different, but she couldn´t do anything.

After having the attention of all the passengers and wanting to die of shame, I tried to sleep and so the time would have flown, but I couldn´t. I remembered the voice of the last sister who came from the city. She wanted to sleep with me the night before I left. Her eyes shined when she talked about the big avenues, the boutiques, the people from the other side of the world, or the lights in the night. She was so excited that I forgot all my fears. But then everything changed. She told me that in the capital you learn to grow up, to establish your priority list, to cope with changes and daily displeasures, to discuss everything and, basically, to be an adult with rigour and seriousness. She cried. But not like when her fool boyfriend left her. She asked me to grow up but to come back with the same eyes of a naughty girl that didn´t understand a word at that moment.

The bus stopped at the capital and I gazed out the window. The city was sad, grey and filled with smoke. I got off in a bad mood and took my luggage. My aunt Adolfina was waiting for me with a forced smile. We walked through the wide streets and were almost run over by some speedy cars more than once. Finally, we arrived at the building I was going to live for the next few months. There were lots of kids in the yard. I saw a young woman wearing big clothes and smoking while discussing with her mother. When they finished yelling at each other, she turned around and smiled at me. She was the first person in the city who I saw smiling! To be honest, I really thought that was not possible. Aunt Adolfina screamed and I jumped running through the stairs.

After three days of helping at home without a second to breathe, and going to bed as angry as I couldn´t even rest, I realised that the city had already turned me into a weird being that I didn´t like at all. No... it wasn´t the city, I have allowed it. I smiled challenging the night´s silence and decided to do the same gesture one more time each day, even when I really wouldn´t want to, but I was determined to not been trapped by those aliens who caught my siblings.