Years ago I wrote my first poetry collection. As a single unit. It took me years to finish it. Its verses fell into cities on four continents. Each poem was accompanied by a tear. Usually several. Each poem needed something to come out, because a lump would form in my throat that prevented me from reading, sleeping, thinking, until the poem glued itself to the page. But this one, or these, did not reveal themselves by their own will. It was normal that they needed bait. Like the photo of a girl with her blue wig, the drawings of that same person, carefully kept, photos in Varadero, in Córdoba, Murcia. The melody, if I did not see before it the person for whom it was willing to be born, stayed there. In me. Choking me.
Like this column that you, reader, have before you now. There are no more baits to lay for the letters that want to be born. That wild, pure, brilliant girl no longer exists. And my chest does not beat enough when faced with her memories, because her actions are what weigh them down.
But this poetry collection has been printed, it is already out there, in the world. So that whoever wishes may slide their eyes over the way in which my spirit does not grow accustomed to her absence. And I feel that it is only fitting that I dedicate a few words to it, before I delete it from my computer, which will never erase it from memory.
Because the words would not come out, I resorted to a simple trick. She left me many things that spill into my days. Sometimes I still speak with a Cuban accent when I get distracted. But one night like the one in which I write this, in the novitiate courtyard of the Antonio Gala Foundation, right across the corner where today grows the olive tree that nourishes itself from the ashes of my Antonio, she offered me a Punch cigarillo. The ground was damp, only the crickets could be heard, and the high walls of the convent seemed a tunnel that we could have traversed, if we wished, toward the moon. In the darkness of the courtyard she lit the cigarette. That face with which I continue dreaming lit up, that face that no longer exists. And the smoke bound us in blue and white.
Since then, if I need to feel close to the moment in which I was definitively captivated by her, I light a Punch cigarillo. The last time I went to the Foundation I smoked four packs in four days. That is how distant her memory is from who she is today.
Tonight the smoke was silver and yellow. And a slow, soft rhythm, which she taught me, beats in my veins. With her help I pull these lines.
And thus, by association, the poetry collection, Monologue with a Deceased Woman (La Fea Burguesía), was written. A book that is many things. I wish it could be more, but I think it cannot. It is filled with moments, clues, gestures, things that only she would understand. That is why I do not quite know how it will travel the world. This little free, wild, and pure booklet.
I wish it well. Because I put in it everything that for me was loving that woman. The one I love, but whom, I repeat, no longer exists. And from eyes that no longer shine as they did for nothing, a pen that does not write with the desire it once did, and a voice that barely wishes to rise, I say goodbye, to the little book. To the doubtful fate of living a love so grand. Now I no longer desire to write, even if I do, nor to read, even if I do, nor to live, even if I still am here. And this is a story that the poetry book does not tell. Perhaps that is why it is beautiful. By throwing itself, obedient and trusting, into a world where death is not covered with words, nor is, in the end, nature, physics, loops, nothingness, deceived with promises that stay in the hands and break in half.
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Author: Emilio José Serrano Loba. Title: Monologue with a Deceased Woman. Publisher: The Ugly Bourgeoisie. Sales: publisher’s website.