That good-byes might as well be welcomes...

That the new year, thought Martha. What's such concept to me? My planning of the year started some months ago, when I decided what I would do for the rest of my days, when I saw myself at last getting new calls from the alternate-dream makers and I told them no more. When my mind was so made and resolved to keep on its verdict.

She realized that she was thinking in Spanish with phrases in another language and remembered Sandra Bullock in Forces of Nature: "How can anyone decide which clothes they're going to wear for the next 25 years?" Well, she stated to herself, I can. Not only can I do it, but I also accept it with pride and devotion. With determination, respect, patience and worship that transmute the anger that was left by an absence that should never have been. Today nothing starts, she kept on thinking: Starting this year, my new years start in November, that's why I'm saying my goals started to take place one month and days ago. The world is beautiful when the appropriate decisions are taken. Unfortunately, it so happened that in order to know what was best, I first chose the wrongest. It hurts, but I'm working within myself so that it won't hurt anymore, so that my memory can be that of a gentleman's before his lady, and nothing may rise above the surface anymore.

Hot water. Lots of sugar. Well, not that much. A muffin. Raspberry jam. Small joys that now had a meaning. A duvet underneath which to lay her feet -and his too- and a light movie for both of them.

Martha rained serenely. Her whole self, with her thoughts and her recalcitrant heart that kept on pulsing with the images from her mind emerging from within the heat with tea smell. She burned. She roared. She flowed like a river at times overflown. Then she eased again. She trembled in tiny orgasms. As in little goosebumps made music by sighs. She let herself be drawn away as if being a desert sandstorm, and the closer she was to her expanded and abysmal goal, the wind that was transforming her into this storm slackened at last and let her lie on the ground she so truly loved and allowed her to be part of a new and humid land that happily permitted her to adhere. For her to turn into fertile soil where the most gracious and beautiful plants were about to sprout.


Spanish version