Could be her?

She slept cowering and walked jumping around. Margaret drew a pentagram in the upper-right corner of every page from her recipes notebook. She was used to doing a braid to stay home and leave the hair free to go on the streets.

She got around the city by scooter, not on the rainy days, when she liked to wear a purple raincoat and transparent waterproof boots so everyone could see her mismatched socks. She didn´t take the time to combine the clothes. Her bedroom was perfectly clean and she looked carefully after every single detail.

She ran early in the morning every day and had a toast with spread chocolate for breakfast. About party nights, she preferred from Thursday to Saturday, but was happy to go out any other day.

Margaret was studying aerospace engineering and was teaching ballet to children in difficult circumstances. She was living on her own since her eighteenth birthday and prepared a meal for her grandparents once a week. She had adopted a dog and a cat.

She was planning to travel to the Argentian coast with a group of friends from her childhood. She was messing around with a boy that she met on a trip to the mountain, but Margaret didn´t want anything serious at that moment.

Her smile could calm anyone but she didn´t hesitate to get angry if someone was being overwhelming. She had a lot of patience except with administrative red tape. She was really good at listening and giving advice. She sometimes asked for help when was struggling with her emotions. She loved to send postcards without signing them when she hadn´t seen someone important for a long time.

So no, I´m not sure if she would have been able to do something like that.

Those other cities

They have an expiration date. You are going to stay there for a couple of weeks, maybe less, and you can not change your ticket to get back to your hometown. However, a piece of your heart drops down and will stay there forever, with no chance to recover it even if you return, especially if you return.

Just some days when happiness gets stronger and the outside world doesn´t matter, everything is intense and you know it. Those short minutes are crucial.

The people you share those days with belong to those memories and would never be the same in any other city, no possible reunion with those feelings, just there, in those special cities, is there when it all makes sense and, at the same time, your universe goes mad.

It´s life, short and intense, and it´s exactly that what makes those cities uniques and temporary.

Everyday poison

They escape from the dreams, from a walk in the forest or the city. They escape from becoming angry at home, from strangers on the train or the supermarket. They escape and come close to me. Sometimes with shyness. Sometimes like a leaf in the wind trying to fly away too quickly. Sometimes they climb my back and grab under my skin.

I let them settle in some corner of my conscience. I listen to them. Not always. They deserve my attention but must learn what their position is. They try to buy the weak ones. Not always successfully. They team up and fight together in a war that has not been declared. I pretend that they don´t leave scars.

Just some of them play with my fingers. Just some of them cross the border and turn into a pile of words. Just some of them reach the lips.

"Place of residence"

It is know place of residence as that space where you live. Maybe a house. Not always a home.

We started February 2020 with a new move. Lenka, Sabine and myself were about to live in a type of student' residence. It was a hotel in front of the sea which rented rooms from their older buildings. It was an experience... well, luckily it was just four weeks.

In our room, we had: three beds, two bedside tables, a small cupboard (where obviously we couldn´t fit the clothes of three for a year and so we basically hung some dresses and the rest kept on our suitcases and plastic boxes that our organization gave us), a plastic transparent chair, a desk with a small tv (that I don´t think any of us switched it on) and a kettle but no cups, a circular board for tea and two uncomfortable chairs, and a typical green hotel easy chairs. We also had our own bathroom. There was just one window and, because of the position of the building, we didn´t have much natural light (I could have forced the edition of the picture but I had to be honest with the reality). One of the walls was sharing with a dance school with lessons every day from eight in the morning to ten in the night.

Breakfast and dinner were included there at some specific timing. If you wanted to have dinner at another time, you could book it and, if you were lucky, someone may give it to you when you arrived tired of working. With the lunch... there were two microwaves that worked sometimes.

The positive point, the fascinating point, was that in two minutes you could literally be walking across the sand. In my despair, I started to run along the beach before going to work...

Going to work?... I sometimes forget that it was just a volunteering placement... I suppose that it is because it wasn´t just a volunteering placement. I had the most supportive team in my office and the young people we worked with were so amazing that made me forget that at some point of the day I had to be back to my "place of residence".

Lovers

Lost in the ocean,

dragged by the current

without any resistance.

Wave after wave,

thunderstorm after thunderstorm.

For how long?

Yesterday it didn´t matter.

I was always interested

in the times of chance.

What about the fog?

It wants to be with you.

What about the wind?

It is your guest.

What about the clear sky?

That is the end.

Kiddos

 -Do you think they will realize it?

-There are just two trains per day.

-So this means that people from the city are not coming and we can swim in the river calmly.

-That´s true!! We should have thought about it before.

-Yes... but we will probably be punished.

-No, the punishment will be just for you because you were the one who hung in the catenary like a monkey.

-It was your idea!

-Okay, we can share it, will be funnier.

22-06-2018

Vertigo

Sometimes was enough to be again the girl who was afraid of the water but wanted to be a mermaid. She walked slowly to the seashore and closed her eyes tightly. She waited patiently for the sea bite. After a few minutes without feeling it, she opened the right eye and checked that the water was still some meters far from her little body.

Then, she took a tiny step and closed her eyes tightly again. Her toes scratched the sand eagerly. As she wasn´t feeling the sea lick, the girl opened the right eye and checked that the water was still some meters far from her little body. She took one more tiny step and repeated the process no more than three times.

Tired of just receiving the ocean sound threat, the girl breathed deeply before screaming with all her might and running wildly towards the waves. She spent so much time soaking that, when going out, she was thinking that was turning into her grandmother considering her wrinkled hands.

She still sometimes played to be that girl who was scared of the water and achieved diving as a mermaid. Despite living a hundred kilometers far from the ocean.

When the time comes

Take me to the ocean and don´t tell me I´m going to drown, that the stars in the sky are the angels I wanted to save.

Take me to the ocean and leave me in the sand until my bowels get to know that I can not sail again.

Take me to the ocean and wait until the foam covers my eyes to see the canvas I didn´t want to look at.

Take me to the ocean and feel how every wave sully my body as others did before I learned to walk.

Take me to the ocean and say goodbye to my memory of salt, let my screams join the unfinished melody they made me sing.

Take me to the ocean and, when you had forgotten me, ask the mermaids to see my sleeping body. Take me back and keep me far from the ocean.

Play time

Charlotte sat down on the bench biting her lower lip. Matt approached her with his butterfly net.

-Yuck, how much blood! - he screamed pointing with his finger the girl´s wound.

-No, don´t touch it.

-But it is not hurting you.

-How do you know it?

-You are not crying.

-Well, it hurts... but it was so much fun.

-What happened?

-I was taking flowers from the top of the wall, they are beautiful and smell very good - she explained excitedly -. They are for my perfume.

-Oh, that´s so cool! Can I help you? I can bring you plaster and we can do the best perfume in the world.

-That would be great... but mum told me that plaster is useless because it´s a big wound. She said that we´ll go to the hospital so they can knit me as if I were a piece of cloth... then I´ll just have a scar.

-Ok, maybe... I can bring you candy so you won´t get bored while they knit you as if you were a piece of cloth.

-You can do perfumes while I´m at the hospital. Before falling, I saw some purple flowers that looked perfect. You can take them for me.

-No, I´ll wait for you, it´s your idea. I think I will search for hidden treasures.

-Okey. Tell the pirates that the fierce Charlotte will kill them if they don´t give you their sweets.

It´s over

To say that she was stubborn, was to underestimate how much she worked to do what she wanted.

They had been talking for months about the party they were celebrating that weekend. Leire worked so hard to be sure that everything was perfect. Her big green eyes checked every single detail.

The guests arrived early but she, still in pyjamas, jumped around everyone smiling and charming them with her curly hair.

It was two hours after, when the music was loud and the glasses were being filled and emptied at the same pace, when the laughs were mixed with the smoke from the barbeque, that Leire stopped in the middle of the balcony and stood quiet with a serious face.

-It´s over, I have to buy it now. Next Thursday... I need it.

And so on she took her jacket and left the house. No one was able to stop her, neither understand what was happening.

Leire walked around the empty streets, without hesitation in her steps and going nowhere. It had been beautiful days, but now she could just walk unable to recognise the city she was living in.

By the time she got back to the party, she had already decided that had to move again and that it was the best party she was ever at.