There goes Marina, here he comes. Wrapped in his name. With his wobbly footsteps, like a wave. With his foam mind. No one will be able to tell how old he is, how many pounds he moves. She doesn’t know, or she doesn’t want to know. And here he goes, here he comes:
“God bless you, mi’jo.
“God bless you, mi’ja.
They’re all blessed. Everyone, your children.
He lives by bending the glen, in the bend. Through the slits of her house the sun enters and she plays to cover the beam of light, to divert it with her hand. It’s his feat.
Fate sent her differently. For her, the most important thing is her paper boat. It’s the joy of your mornings. He takes him to the river to see him advance in the water thread. Others say he goes to the glen to look better, because there are no mirrors in his house. And since he doesn’t sit still, he goes over and over, until one day he stops.
Marina is black as baobab, black as absence. He likes colors and so he chooses his cloth-letas, his robes, his scarves. It doesn’t skimp. It looks like a flag as it advances through the trillo, when it goes up on the asphalt.
She always gets to the end of the line and when she gets the place, she doesn’t accept. His head moves in swirl, so there’s no doubt about it. He wants to be just like the rest of us. And he goes oronda, loma down, with his tiny bread, moving the boar like a aspa.
The wall of your house is full of pots: pots, helmets, peeps. Marina grows cacti. They say he likes to feel the slight pang of the spine on his fingertip. Maybe practice for the pangs of life.
One day he fell in love. And he took the boy, one of his little boats. The young man laughed, laughed real, did it eagerly. Marina pulled awe from the afterlife. She screamed as if a thousand pins pierced her, as if it were the end of the world. That’s what they say.
She came from the hospital quiet, folded in herself, like a ball. And the look was lost some time somewhere that only she knows.
Marina was my mother’s student. He tried to be. When the teacher asked a question, she moved her hand high, desperately.
–Let’s see, Marina… what’s the answer?
–Seño, Miss… I’m turning green.
Nothing had to do with it, but Marina was proud to have answered and that wasn’t going to be taken from anyone, not even the laughter of her classmates, from the whole classroom. I’ve already learned that.
Laughter is sometimes euphoria; sometimes, fright.
His course was that of other schools, other teachings; but he never forgot his ward teacher.
–And where is the log? “He tells me one day.
“He’s gone, he’s gone.
–But… where, where… I want to see her.
Marina challenged me with her innocence.
“You can’t see her anymore,” I said.
Then Marina the cantarina, Marina the blessed one, stood dry. He stroked my hands, squeezed them with all his might, and… ran loma down. Every now and then he’d stop and say goodbye.
He asks me about his teacher every time he finds me. And it doesn’t matter what I tell you. She doesn’t understand, she doesn’t understand.
Here he comes, there goes Marina. Nobody knows how old he is, how many pounds he moves.
“God bless you, mi’jo.
“God bless you, mi’ja.
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