Christmas Miracle

  It's Christmas Eve, the street walker lays on her home, the concrete benches, resting on the scabbed shoulders scratched from the hard concrete. Tears dried since she already shed all she had for herself and the world. Echoes distant, glares fogging up while arms embrace the fortune of a story.

   The woman of the park shivers in feverish delirium. She misses the story stopped long ago that it confuses her what were fables or reminds of her own. Around her, the city’s central stage seems decorated, bright cans, colorful pieces of caramelized apples, ribbons, brightly illustrated wrapping papers, fragments of the witnessed happiness.

   The fake snow ripped through swings in the wind; neglected colored plastic cups discarded after use dance popping on the ground. "They were so bright" - she thinks inset a slight awakening.

   When her eyes shut, she sees the snow loosen up and fall over the city as white confetti, flying in the soft breeze. Below her she can no longer feel the cement, but the soft smoothness of the white snow. A warm snow enveloping her in a hug for a moment, only to wake up again the next minute by the laughter of teenagers staring at her. She smiles appreciatively for the visit, happy, the sound of their laughs sounding like thorns crackling on fire.

   One by one the stores have closed their doors. The lights have been turned off, steps extinguished, no longer are the singing voices heard and behold the bells of the cathedral announce the twelve chimes.

   With eyes shut, she dresses the white snow, floats climbing the twelve steps of darkness, one by one. Her hair elongates, her figure glows and a serene scent of roses enters through her nostrils. She feels the wrinkled face stretching, blushing. From the third step she can already gaze at the distant star singing heavenly voices, approaching the hands extended for the last time.

   The square remains dark, oblivious with all its plastic of the Christmas miracle that just took place. It took darkness and loneliness so she could receive her wished star.

   She was found the next morning. Covered in mysterious white glittering substance; she had a smile on her lips and the glazed eyes shining as she was gazing at the morning star.

National Hospital December 25, 2012 ...

A Christmas wish

  

         The city’s streets are festively lighted, full of laughter like a fairy tale. On vacation lots of people come to the “soft breeze” city, as the town is known, searching for it’s colorful caring life. It’s December and December is the month to hope for a better year to come;  the month in which the hopeful sparkles on the children’s eyes spreads contagiously to everyone's.

         Wrapped in colorful papers toys hold hope, the promise of laughter and that today’s happiness could mean happiness ever after.

         Softly the fake snow seems to melt from above the city’s central stage, there’s a fog of lights surrounding the city’s singers.

         Another December, the far away stars are beyond the gods, because it’s Christmas and the blinking of artificial lights blinds the sky.

         On the benches that surrounds the stage, near the bicolor stones of the sidewalk, away from the crowd of late buyers, a lady sits alone.

         The lady is very tiny and weak. On her thin, short and bleached hair she wears some bandages hiding an unimportant wound. It’s possible to see her shaking, even from the distance; hopelessly she lays on her knees as she looks at her bare feet and can’t help but make a wish to Santa.

         The lady’s wish isn’t made of written, spoken or thinkable words, but her message echoes, louder than the powerful speakers that amplifies the voice of those  who can sing. She holds the antitheses of a song all curled up, and from her silent wish a tear   springs, slowly slides and fall.

         If there weren’t so many artificial lights in this city, there would be stars available in the sky, instead the only ones visible are the ones money can buy. It’s clear she can’t afford one.

         The lady’s wish is only a Christmas Star. Is She going to have Christmas?

The Ring’s Secret

Seven years.

Fragments of a lifetime suspended throughout the universe. The secrets are written all over the stars. Messages graphed in music language, metaphors made out of unpronounceable words. Echoes the music of a weep, the wailing of a child expelled with tears of love.

It all makes sense; she holds the ring and sighs, finally: the truth.

The colors dance in the streets, in the windows, the trees saying so much swaying their leaves, and when undressed in the cold autumn nights, you may hear them tell sad stories through the wind howling over dried twigs.  A dream of spring hopes, contrasting the intensity of a winter. All things say their mysteries.

Pain.

The stone shines blue hues. Blue topaz, a deep blue resembling infinity, tears of past sorrows and things to come. A thing. The ring is just a thing; the vehicle of the message she deciphered today, it carries this feeling of guessing what's yet to come printed on the hard permanent shape of a stone. Stone which has been cloistered underground, at rest, in deep silence, as part of the foundation sustaining this soil that holds the weight of passing generations. The grains of your dust can talk.

One day it was the prospector's treasure, another the merchant’s, treasure on the hand of the happy graduating student, wife’s, mother’s.

The stone was formed gross, generated by time, by the favorable conditions of the soil, dirty. Rustic man with calloused hands managed it. The stone has suffered huge losses; parts of it were amputated to give its rectangular shape. It faced the cruel sandpaper and the heat of friction in polishing.

The designer sat down one day, magnifying glass in hand examining it between poignant tweezers. The designer evaluated it from the apex to the base, scanned its beauty and inspired gave it scrollworks to accentuate all that blue glory; he decided that the stone would rest in a golden palanquin.

It was then, in the morning of October 31, 2003, Halloween, the day she passed by window of the shop and read the enigma she could not figure out, however she was hypnotized by it. When she touched that stone, she instantly became slave of the ring’s force, even though she could not take it since at that time she could never buy such expensive jewelry.

The following year she went far away to study for a year. It was a season of many miracles. She met the love of her life, a Baroque love. She married. She had left those three dreamed years of college behind. Suffered. What had she done? And now? Nothing making any sense in the confusion of  so many changes. She had traced her paths in the sand, and the wind of time erased it all.

It was unbearable to live without that dream. Therefore in 2007 she returned. She left her husband for a year, their dog died, the building owner of their store asked her husband to deliver the keys in 120 days, after 16 years at the same location: “Sir, you are not in the plan”. Chaos. Tears. Sleepless nights immersed in books, sipping coffee made by her father. She had returned to say goodbye. Walking in the streets so familiar yet as a stranger, she spotted the ring right away. She had forgotten it. It was still waiting for her.

She decided it was going to be her class ring. The goldsmith lacked the symbols of a fleur-de-lis on the right and the owl on the left. The stone had a risk on the surface, that’s the reason it was never sold. The goldsmith offered either a discount or to lapidate it again. She opted to lapidate. The stone has visible marks from it.  Marks of the last touches.

The ring rests in a drawer most part of the time, it seems to scream every time she gazes at it when she opens that drawer.. The whole story flashes through her mind for a moment. Sometimes she smiles at it, others she cries. A stone colored by waters of nostalgia.

Amongst many pieces of the puzzle, the other day she started reading old stuff. She recalled that text, the day of Halloween, all the smells, the laughter of friends who do not smile with her any more. At the end of that story a date: early hours of November 1, 2003.

Exactly seven years later, at 2:57 am  she pulled the arms of the daughter who was born into the world. She had embraced the prologue of a new story. The ring had tried to tell her, she knew in feelings and only now she had been given the knowledge of that mystery. The stone of that ring is the stone of the month the child was born, the door of a secret yet to come.

Sparkling Spell

            Morning or October, the fresh air and rain scents fill the bedroom. A silent sun rises warming the breeze of this new born morning.

Before the alarm goes off she is awaken by birds singing, and a stubborn sunray that plays on her sad eyes. The bedroom is hot; from every corner lays neglected objects left by the rush of the week ending.

They say today is witches day – she remembers jumping up suddenly. The morning awakes in a rush; the day will pass by very fast. Every day the same thing: Mother Nature explodes in a gorgeous show outside that she won’t have any time to see.

            _ Daddy, Wake up! Could you fix me some coffee?

            He is a construction worker, but he’s been unemployed for over three years, since he’s gotten sick and lost a good job he had, exactly the same time when she realized her giant and almost impossible dream: she got into College. She had to pretend not to have any feelings and just take the only income in the household to pay for her classes.

            The house is very tiny, four tiny rooms only, the mother still asleep.

            She brushes her teeth looking at the stained mirror in the bathroom making witches faces, since today will be the first day of her life she’ll go to a Halloween party.

            The scent of coffee fills the house; daddy’s coffee is the best coffee of the entire world, especially when he serves her in an old porcelain cup, her favorite.

            Daddy complains he’s running out of ethanol, it’s not enough even to take her to work. Suddenly the coffee turns too bitter.

            The car is really old, all they have. The house is borrowed; some friends gifted the car. Her parents have such a big heart they can’t see their own condition, they go, religiously to visit sick, needy people, they take all they can share: words of peace, companionship and love. The mom purchases for the poor, with the church funds, so many times she deliver to the really poor, forgotten homes, with little kids hungry waiting on the dark uneven gates built out of scraps, and she forgets her own need. She knows she is really fortunate to be chosen to take hope.

            They have lots of friends, the humble home is always visited and people just seem to like spending time with them.

            Finally the car starts, but it’s necessary to push it, the reverse is not working.  They leave, she goes anxious, expecting that things will be better today in the store, she loves her job, she wants to improve, to do her best, so she can make the store profitable, for she works for someone’s dream, her boss’s dream. She knows so much depends on her, and she goes out of her way to make things work, because her work is a mirror that reflects herself.

            Lunch time. Today it will be impossible to eat home. She eats a cochinha and rushes to help organizing the preparations for her class’s Halloween party.

            She buys a huge rat with red eyes, wonderful, looks like the real thing. She is going to use it in the decorations. She buys a spider to use in her neck, since she will be the black widow. The minutes go by spinning.

            Exhausted she heads back to work. Suddenly, in a bright window she sees an opalescent ring and can’t stand herself: goes into the shop and shows her amusement.

            Solicit the seller opens up the window and offers her the jewelry to try on.

            It’s a golden ring, sculpted in nice curves with a big blue topaz that rests on top of a square shaped box.

            With her breath suspended she glides her eyes at the transcended moment in which the jewelry rests on her finger, and the moment is as real as the skies  that some people say isn’t blue but that is, if you just  look at it.

            She is sorry to give the jewelry back to the sale girl, but continues her way to the witches’ day that waits on her.

            Things somehow are changed, she takes a sparkle more intense than the one the jewelry had, reflected on her eyes. She keeps going thinking that if she could afford that jewelry, she wouldn’t have all the problems she have now.

            The evening comes, and the rain, and then the witches, odalisques, monsters of all kind invade town. The party is a success, and she was stunning all in black with a spider crawling on her neck.

            Contaminated by the happiness of the monsters she plays and smiles, the sparkle of the ring won’t erase the hope from her eyes. She knows life is lapidating her for some da she will be glisten somewhere.

November 1st 2003

3:00am

Flying leaves

Sacred roots held to the sowing moment

Opulent, the trees tell stories of quiet mists,

Droughts, whereabouts of so many hearts

It keeps the memory of baby birdies

The resting place of butterflies

The little boy whom will live forever shrouded by glimpses of his own childhood

A grandmother sweeping leaves with a straw broom, a broom made of dead leaves

Leaves that once transcended the green photosynthesis

from the rainbow hidden in the white light

light from a distant sun

The leaves of yucca chopped into bowls of soup to be served to the plastic dolls

Play Indians with headpieces made out of coconut leaves

Winged by children’s dreams

Scorched leaves crackling in the fire, charred

discarded leaves fading into ashes

leaves at the dinner table

exotic flavored leaves

Tender leaves, dry leaves,

Poisonous leaves covering the sex at the first awakeners of science

The boy lifts it to the sunlight outside

Trying to read his destiny written on the green veins

and drink water from it in pure fountains

while a shaman squeezes the heeling juices into bows full of hope

Leaves flying in the wind

Whirling dancers ate the moment’s pulse

Describing arabesques, lines, hieroglyphs

Crackling silent from the twigs crying their loss

Leaves laying on soft ground

Buried, expecting the metamorphosis of time

To transform them in sap to new leaves to come