Broken mirror

PalmLeave the notebook on the folding table. It's raining outside. My head is resting against the window, between the darkness and the ice. Loneliness is a plane crossing the ocean at midnight, filled with silence. The window shelters the raindrops, and the early morning gazes back at me, as if another's eyes were looking at me curiously, with the serenity that time sometimes allows.

I wish the plane would touch down, but we still have eleven hours. I want to cross the red bridge, go up and down the shores that will lead me into the bars, the galleries, the tiny corners that make me love cities. I want to get lost in Chinatown and contemplate stories, unforgettable in their everydayness. I had wanted to visit the city many times before this month of March, but we exist, and longings come to find us when we're no longer paying attention.

Words make time and life drift apart. I read 'jasmine' and a patio from long ago comes to mind. I write her name and know we won't have a daughter to tell how we let go of each other's hands. The word 'love,' should I capitalize it or use lowercase? a-mor, am-oro, amo-r. If I say 'rooftop,' the clothes hanging out to dry appear, entertaining the wind and making me smile, so clichéd. She picks up her notebook to write 'longing' in the corner of a page, and the gray lead of the pencil spreads a sad blue, like a lonely lake.

Nine hours of flight left, I glance at the seats across the aisle. A woman is asleep with her sunglasses on, the lenses as clear and pink as her skin. Her nails are painted, her ears are covered by enormous headphones that tilt her head. Beside her, another woman holds her hand, unable to sleep, nervous, her eyes gleaming, filled with the urgency she feels to arrive. Her skin is brown, like her hair, tightly curled. She wears an enormous bracelet and holds the book she tries to read, but doesn't turn the pages; she notices I'm watching her.

Lying on the sand of memory, the turbulence arrives; the heaviest weight is the love others lament for us, the love they expect from us, what they give us even though we haven't asked for it. The expectation is a dark tremor that spreads to the tips of my fingers. Are we a little or a lot to blame for the feelings of others? It's as if they leave nests in our branches, without asking permission. What a dark genealogy of women's desire, when they love other women.

Nostalgia soaks everything that has been lived intensely and has found closure. I close my eyes to erase the loves and the lovers. Thus begins the tragedy, "animal of memories, slow and sad animal." The burst of dawn catches me by surprise as I take stock of my forgettings, but beauty persists and pierces my memory with a red thread. Will these two women, who love each other tenderly beyond the hallway, one day also have to forget each other? The metamorphosis that accompanies love leads us through unfamiliar alleyways, never knowing if they will lead us to a plaza or a dead end.

The language I learned to speak in childhood was that of the first person I loved. Do these two women who love each other on the other side speak my language? Do they love each other or are they lovers? Don't lovers love each other? When we are children, the future and wonder can be the same thing; then come the years, and wonders become the impossible, the broken mirror, the summit we never quite reach. In childhood, if we are lucky, 'love' is written in capital letters, conjugated unconditionally. But growing up means understanding that we will only be vestiges of other loves while we wait for the great love.

I like the word "foreigner." When I was little, my sister and I used to play at speaking invented languages, imagining ourselves as inhabitants of faraway lands. It's wonderful to be able to be a foreigner, without being forced to be one. Now I want to get off the plane. There are almost four hours of flight left, and I don't know who the other inhabitants of this "small country" are. The two of them are sleeping with their arms intertwined, one's head on the other's shoulder. I don't want time to run out. I imagine them crossing the red bridge, leaving behind the fierce jungles and tropical storms.

There are only two hours of flight left, and I'll watch a documentary about lemurs that's on the plane's screen. I want to go to Madagascar. Lemurs are social animals that live in matriarchal societies. They live in trees and are capable of jumping great distances. I'd like to be a lemur. I'd like to know what happens when we jump to the other side of habit, does it bring about great love?

PostscriptThe world is sinking under the weight of genocide, fascism, and missiles. Here, from the abyss hotel, we tell stories and contemplate defeat.