2021 Collection
Caracas
My alarm clock is drowned by the macaws screeching from my family room. Every week they come to ask for the same old sunflowers seeds that my mom keeps buying without caring how expensive they get every month. We walk together in the morning light to feed the blue, and red, and yellow macaws that trade blessings and luck for simple sunflower seeds. I make a disturbed face, why are they so damn loud? Entitled demigods.
When ready, we take a trip through the city, my institute being in the suburbs. I live in the metro area. When my mom is in a rush we take the highway that goes over the river that divides my city in two. If she is feeling sleepy we go through the back roads that curve around valleys and make the car bumpy enough to keep you alert. And in those melancholic days in which we both drown in the sad cloud that has landed on my country, we zoom across El Boulevard del Cafetal. No regard for streetlights, of faceless strangers, of any source of life.
Since we have time, I ask her to stop by the bodega at the end of the boulevard before arriving to the foot of the hill to buy a pack of Marlboro Gold. She nags about how it is too early to be buying cigarettes, but I remind her that JP and Ricky are picking me up from school to eat empanadas in that Chacao stand where they call us "La flaca, el gordo and el catire." They could take me to the bodega on our way there, but mom and I have 15 minutes to spare before they shut my institute's gate on my face.
Fuck, I forgot my lighter.
A Desert Island
When I was a kid and my mom would wildly cry out her frustrations and anxiety she would always use this phrase, “I wish I could disappear to a desert island and never be found.”
As a young child, hearing that would terrify me. Living without my mom was the biggest nightmare for me. And to imagine her all alone without anyone to be with her brought me a lot of distress.
Now, as a 20-year old, I repeat the phrase like a mantra to myself. I want to disappear to a desert island and never be found. Which seems more hopeful than flat out saying that I want to kill myself. That phrase is too overused by me.
My life is good. I am very fortunate in a lot of things. But having socially acceptable things and living to the expected standard doesn’t guarantee happiness.
I am so disgustingly desensitized to my emotions and to my life, that I just don’t care at all. The indifference preached by my mother to be used as a shield has turned out to be my natural state. I feel like an empty carcass that is just there drifting. Drifting until it reaches an unknown beach and be consumed by the sand and just disappear.
I hate that I hate a lot of things.
I just want to disappear to a desert island and never be found. I wouldn’t have anything around to hate other than myself. But at least one thing is not as bad as so many others.
Subway After Karaoke
And I was sitting there alone in the subway with tears running down my red cheeks. I was so hot, sweaty and my heart was going a thousand miles a minute.
God, I am so incredibly happy. I feel infinite. I adore you. I know you think you are just a regular boy and you are! You are just a boy but you are my reason. In this moment I know you have to be the reason. Because I have never been so happy and mesmerized in my life.
You are what I thought was impossible. I can’t breathe. I am crying and smiling. I can’t believe the things I do for you because I would deem them stupid if anyone else was in my shoes. You know I do, do.