IMAGINARY
An imaginary woman, in an imaginary Overseas territory, watches her red nails rest on an imaginary personal computer. Each key is a vertebra in the relief of the back of her imaginary lover, author of an essay that explores the self-consciousness of his imaginary self, and who is merely a character of a spic writer who creates an improbable story in the universal encyclopedia imagined by Alexander the Great in Egypt that disappears from history at the precise moment that the Library of Alexandria burns.
There is no author. No essay. No writer. No short story. There is an empty street in Manzanares el Real very similar to that of a Chilean village. Both peoples rub against each other erotically in a space-time vertex while the Universe does not cease to expand until nothing and no one remembers Alexander, his plate of lentils and his library under the flames of imaginary oblivion.
The priestess, owner of the ancestral magic necessary for the copulation of the territories separated by ten thousand five hundred and seventeen kilometers, nods, pulled by fatigue and sleep. Then, the imaginary woman stops typing for a brief moment that does not matter in the imaginary planet, but the man lying on the armchair of his imaginary terrace wakes up startled from a nightmare of a thousand doors in none of which he finds the woman of his dreams. The rain falls sweetly after the storm over the Sierra de Madrid. When the imaginary man tries to go back to sleep, the Chilean woman once again rests her long-nailed fingers on the keys. He feels the rhythm of her caress and falls asleep. The Earth continues its journey through space at the astronomical speed of two million kilometers per hour, dragged by its inescapable destiny.
BY A HEAD
At the age of fifteen he passed me by a head. Before three hundred and sixty-five days it was obvious that he would be two heads taller than me. And it's not that I was an extremely short human being. I have a fairly average height, not only by the standards of my country, I would dare to say that worldwide as well.
In fact, in many situations I was the tallest person in the room.
Although he eventually stopped growing, it was necessary to buy an extra-long bed, adjust the height of many pieces of furniture in the kitchen and bathroom, and raise the lamps so he wouldn't hit his head, and many additional hours were required to search for and eventually find clothes or shoes to fit his size.
I was never concerned about his socialization, as he always seemed happy and never had a negative report card at school or expressed any complaint about being bullied or any other type of abuse or mistreatment.
I found it reassuring when he introduced us to his partner, a most pleasant person of almost the same height. One sleepless night for other reasons, I was seized by a doubt: where had he found his better half?
At the university everything continued quite normally.
For his twenty-first birthday he decided to celebrate at home. Distracted in the preparations I only realized that something was not quite right when it was time to sing Happy Birthday. With the cake in both hands and standing on my tiptoes, I could barely hold the tray at an appropriate height for all the guests to see.
With my offspring acting in practice as a human shield, I became aware that this was a true community of giants. At the same time, I learned that I knew very little about my son, that his world seemed completely foreign to me and that the years of silence were only hiding something that now made me deeply uneasy.
NOSE
The pink cashmere coat attracted all eyes at the entrance to the Museum, but he didn't act as if he was the object of so much admiration, curiosity, or simple visual attraction in the gray and slightly dark environment.
Thin, almost sickly thin, his bones magnificently marked the structure of the beautiful coat that covered him from his neck to his feet, barely revealing the tips of his black leather boots with square heels.
He had a gesture on his mouth that revealed the search he was making with his gaze bouncing through the groups of people that were beginning to fill the space of the entrance hall of the majestic building. The morning light barely penetrated the enormous arches before getting lost in solemn halls filled with so much history that, if it had any weight, they would sink to the liquid center of the Earth.
His skin was so pale that it caught the pink reflection of the coat and made him even more attractive to the curious onlookers who watched him sneakily or blatantly. The total absence of the man in the pink coat fueled the boldness of the tourists and locals who had come to the city center that March morning to visit the famous building and see its valuable collections.
The young man did not notice the increasing proximity of people dressed in gray, black, and marengo gray.
Amidst the swirl, the pink coat throbbed like the large pistil of a carnivorous flower with pale quivering petals. Grayish and fragile human petals.
Silence had become powerful in the hall.
Suddenly, a ray of light broke the angle of a window that faced east and passed silently through the entrance hall until it illuminated the face of the man in the pink coat.
The flower stopped throbbing and a held sigh sounded louder than it was possible to imagine.
The promontory of the nose took up the largest area of the face and the mere sight of it sent unwanted spectators back in haste. Surprised at this new element of the show, they began to whisper among themselves. Acquaintances and strangers felt they had some kind of license to make the features of the young man in pink a reason for judgment or analysis.
Bored beyond measure, he, the center of the show, opened his arms and, extending his magnificent coat, soared over the hominid heads, hovered for a few seconds, and then headed towards The Garden of Earthly Delights, where he found his perfect location in the famous work of El Bosco.
A DISTURBING HUMMINGBIRD
I was not yet capable of reasoning when, as a child, I understood the magic behind hummingbirds. The speed of the flapping, the tinyness of the body, the iridescent colors and the barely perceptible buzzing sound were revealed to me by mere science infused as a true miracle of the aerodynamic beauty of nature.
Long spring afternoons passed through my life as I remained absorbed in contemplating the small birds that came to the gallery of my family's house on the south bank of the Limarí River. Just before the temperature turned unpleasant, the last hummingbirds would arrive to say good night to me while sipping the nectar of the white hibiscus.
Decades later, when I had to plant the garden of my first house on the outskirts of the city, I planted a wide variety of species to attract hummingbirds. Verbenas, lavenders, hollyhocks, honeysuckles, begonias and geraniums covered the entire front of my bedroom window. I would wake up half intoxicated by the aromas at dawn and would console myself from the tedium of the workday every afternoon by contemplating my feathered friends.
One day when the sunset was particularly beautiful and the temperature was perfect, reality suffered a slight alteration. Then, it was it who began to observe me. It took me a few minutes to realize that the rules of the game had changed, but I soon adapted to the new situation. It was constantly changing positions so at times he seemed distracted. But no. It was just completing the brain image in which I was a kaleidoscopic being. An ugly animal tied to a chair behind a glass of regular quality. An almost colorless biped, with teeth that prevented him from enjoying the delights of flowers. A clumsy mammal unable to fly. Inside its small skull, the survival instinct reassured it that this human did not represent any danger to its life. It looked straight into my eyes to read my own mind and felt the nausea of my fears and anxieties. When I was finally able to hold its gaze I read beyond doubt how much it despised me.
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