I often wonder whether life mocks me in subtle ways, or if what happens to me are merely coincidences. Today’s made me talk to myself and say your name out loud, in public, my namesake.
It was around two in the afternoon when, just as I was about to cross Rodríguez Familiar Street, near the café I once stormed out of without paying, a lady hurried toward me. “Would you buy a calla lily, miss?” she said. My eyes fell on the little basket brimming with slender white flowers, gathered into a lovely bouquet, and a bitter smile gave me away.
“Oh! No, thank you,” I replied before crossing the street and making sure no car would crash my heart into my hands. It wasn’t an “Oh!” of annoyance, but an “Oh!” of pity, of nostalgia, of longing, of pain.
My legs rushed me toward the park and, one last time, I looked back toward the lady with the calla lilies. “Calla lilies for you, who are everywhere except where I most want you to be,” I murmured, lowering my gaze to my left hand. I imagined you holding it, like other afternoons when I walked along Calzada de Los Arcos accompanied by your ghost. “Calla lilies for you, my love, my ghost, since they are your favorite flowers,” the thought swam through my mind. Restless waters that, from ghostly drifting, turned into waves and then a tidal wave on my pillow.
What is your obsession with mocking me, life?
What is your purpose in rubbing this man, this namesake of mine, in my already sleepless face?
As I crossed the park toward Bosques del Acueducto, my stupid, naive mind thought about going back to find the lady with the calla lilies, asking her for a small bouquet and buying it for you. Keeping it in clean water, in a beautiful crystal vase, and giving it to you at the airport when you arrived in Querétaro. I imagined your beautiful smile unfolding at my gift, your dimple appearing with joy, while I reminded you that girls in love do give flowers.
I shouldn’t write these fictional stories or turn them into movies in my mind, drunk on high cortisol. My hormones are fed up with you. All of me is fed up with these days that feel like an endless Sunday of nostalgia. I wake up shaken by the nightmare where you prove my hypothesis right, where you hurt me more than you ever have in reality; I snooze the damn alarm once, twice, five times, and once again I’m late as hell for work. I think of you, I postpone my quota of five journalistic notes for one, two, four hours, and I’m late again. I write the daily piece begrudgingly because all I want is to vomit onto processed cellulose how badly thinking of you affects me, how much I miss your scent, which I’ve almost forgotten, how badly I want to be your blanket at night and hold your soul. How much I wish I could run back to the lady with the calla lilies, stop her, and buy a bouquet for the day you arrive in my conservative, Catholic Querétaro.
I think about writing to you, kindly, a message to accompany the calla lilies and remind you, in a nauseatingly poetic way, that I love you and that I still believe you are the love of my life. Writing you chronicles of everything, starting with the one at the beach, where you found me asleep on the lounge chair and I caught your attention. Writing reviews of your music, even though I’m not that close to rap, just to shout to the world about your art and your aggressive, critical rhymes. Writing to you about how fascinating it is to catch your enchanted gaze when I burst into scandalous laughter, blushing in front of you, only to break the nervous laughter with a kiss.
I wish I could write my poems only for you, that all my honey would taste of you and of calla lily notes. I wish I could write to you and love you, because that’s what I do best in this life. I wish I could give you the best of me along with a bouquet of calla lilies.
But you don’t deserve it.
Photography by Ana Valentina Palacio.
