Oasis

Evenings of imposed winter. Early nights and soaked to the skin rain since the very first hour of the morning. Evenings shouting for heat. Warm feet. The night, wrapped-up in her black leather coat, stops with the finger the second hand of the watch. Everyone. And the escape to the sheets never happens. I search desperate a good enough placebo for the soul getting frozen. Just like this: soaked. Practicing voodoo from inside my chest. Shooting my ribbons with ice pins. I sniff around beging for a stool in a warm corner. And dry. And warm. Warm. Warm. The night has taken possesion of the sidewalks steaming up the street lamps with that breath of her. There are faces glued to nearly all the glasses. From both of the sides.

Feet shout. Heart shouts. Soul shouts. And head threatens with going completly mad. The umbrella is little more than a dragon ready to make me disapear between its jaws. But, at last, at the other side of the street, a single cripple and orphan chair turns up nodding off near a stove. I take it and love it unconditionally. As if it has always been mine. I take off my coat. The dragon is parked at the door. I breath deeply. And start tasting a hot coffe I haven't still asked for. But it comes. And with the very first sip it kicks out the rest of the day. The rest of the world. Alone, it and me. And all the unconfesable sins I go wispering with each sip. Singing smoothly our song with the touch of the teaspoon.

The dark and hot lullaby bewitches me. World around gets full of golden and shiny bells. Through the door, looking lost, gets in an angel. Smelling to wet feathers. He adopts a skiny stool. And stirs in the coffee stardust from some other night. For a moment I feel his eyes tangled in my hair and I shiver. I look at him and his eyes steam up mines. We share a coffee sip moment. Something in the abnormal shine of the aire frightens him. His scary eyes roll down my neck to get hidden somewhere in my blouse. I rescue the dragon and go away.

Story chosen to take part in the anthology of the Short story contest "ILLUSIONS"

http://letrasconarte.es.tl

Sleep

There were nights - more and more each time - when sleep played cat and mouse with me. Following and chasing one another in turns. Without catching up not even once. When it caught me up, it licked my eyelids slowly, with its tongue of shadows, and just for a moment I felt I could with the tip of my fingers touch the sweet corner of resting. But quickly it jumped forward or upward and again I chased it waving my hands in the cold air of the bedroom. And so 50, 500,... millions of times each night. Until dawn with arms akimbo stopped at last the game.

That nights - more and more - I liked having her by my side. Feel the weight of her little body next to me on the bed. I heard her purring from the very edge of the sleep and move nervous when it went away from between my arms. Some nights, she, angry, run after it, caught it and put it defeated proudly on my bed. ”Miaow!”

Translated from a story chosen to take part in the anthology of the contest "BELOVED ANIMALS"

http://letrasconarte.es.tl

A little bit mad

A little bit mad.
Looking at the floor.
At the dirty asphalt.
Without seeing.

A little bit mad.
Looking at his hands.
Fingers moving
like fantastic creatures.

A little bit mad.
Looking at the horizon.
Promised.
Postponed.
Stolen.

A little bit mad.
Looking at the moon,
showing lustfull
with her cloak of cold and shadows.

A little bit mad.
Wipping away his tears
with the dirty border of indifference.
(When tears were.)

A little bit mad.
Swallowing prinde
and dignity
to eat.
(And for dessert, distrusting.)

A little bit mad.
Because sanity is expensive
and he can not afford it.
Because sleeping warm is expensive
and he can not afford it.
Because talking to people is... hard.

A little bit mad.
Because lonelyness and cold
have infected
his willing for life.

A little bit mad.
Looking at the floor.
At the horizon.
On a bench.

To war!

Mambru went to war.
To war!
A war far from home.
With words that got stuck to the roof of the mouth.
Spitting just the essential ones.
A war with hundreds of battles.
Where the last words of each one
started the first paragraph of the next one.
A spiral war.
Where each little advance
meant an extraordinary journey.

Mambru went to war.
The first step on the way
was the las step on the way.
This way he did it:
knowing his little footstep
erased a bit of his shadow.

The mother?
Cried or was dead.

On the front,
men are minimum
like "ones" on the midday sun.
Childre are...
Children have no shadow.

Days and nights follow ones anothers
as in a chain of chiaroscuro.
As if an only day with disconnections.
He doesn't grow up.
He stays prisoner of his fossil childhood.
A fistful of bones.

The mother?
Cries or is dead.

When war ends,
as well as his shadow,
he will have lost several teeth,
huge bits of his soul
and all his self-respect.
He will have vanished under his kit bag.
Under the weight of his conscience.
He won't be able to find the sweet breadcrums
to go back home.
He will be lost in the spiral labirynth
he helped to build.
Nobody neither from inside nor from outside
will make a kind hand gesture.
Ones will want to forget.
Other ones won't remember.
He will not exist.

The mother?
Will cry or have died.

Mambru went to war.
He won't come back.

The White Queen

The White Queen sees it all from the hill.
She tastes in small sips the oxygen of the day,
wondering how bitter will be the next gulp.
If there will be a next one...

She gazes at the battlefield
still pretending to be a masked ball.
The little pawns wearing as for a party.
Dancing and laughing.
As it would last!
As if that was the real world.
Real!

The Queen thoughtfully touches her crown,
licking the last sip bitterness.
She knows them all.
By their names.
The current ones and all the others.
She knows how many pairs of boots have them used
and how many dancing shoes.
She has looked them all in the eyes
and seen them all die a little.

An Odd Pawn goes up the hill.
It is not from this game.
From no game.
It was born for a whim.
A whim of something free.
But it is a pawn...
Without wings.
If it just got wings!
No boot is good for its feet.
And at the balls it can only
follow with its fingers the rhythm of the music.
Follow with its eyes the rhythm of the feet.

The Pawn greets her.
With a nod of its head.

The Queen offers him the ball.
With a wave of his hand.

The Pawn refuses.
With its head.
With its feet.
Barefoot.
The Queen nods.

Oxygen becomes more and more bitter.
More scarce.
Nothing.

The White Queen becomes more and more white.
More incorporeal.
Nothing.

The Odd Pawn sees it all from the hill.

A trapped angel

Some moments exist
when reality branches off
in a way you can choose
between going on your way
other turning around.

At the very same instant
in the same way
it takes two different directions,
visible one from the other,
as in a mirror.

Yesterday and today
seem separated barely by a step.

But anyway it's not that easy...

I've seen an angel trapped in the mirror at the other side.
He jumped and waved his arms around.
"I'm here!"

An angel.
Trapped.
In the mirror.
At the other side.

Opinions

Carefully planned homicides, life imprisonment, forced resignation of public officials, legitimated plundering, movements on the stock exchange,weather forecasting,changes of government, coups d'état, repeal of laws,... poisoned the air at the cafe, making it thick and uncomfortable.

The sleepy smoke from the pipes climbed slow through the depths of predictions.

The most highly reputed moustaches of the city declaimed categorical rosaries of warnings and advice.

Some beards, already grey, agreed vehemently, getting tangled in the tight warp of bickering.

Opinions...

Story chosen to take part into the anthology of the Short Stories Contest “OPINIONS”

http://letrasconarte.es.tl