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ALEJO
I was in my room, one morning in Autumn, with my opened window that it
left to pass, without reverences, a soft wind that it brought to my mind the voices
of springtime, voices of school, of wind and sun on the field of baseball and of
afternoon, playing under the firs. I remembered Alejo.
Alejo was my classmate and We shared, all mornings, the classes, the breaks, the
sandwiches, and alfajores, and, some afternoons, we played baseball.
Alejo had almond-shaped eyes. I remember He said me that he liked my hair. And
We both smiled very pretty.
We were together with the cold, with the hot, with the rain and with the wind.
We memorized poesies and we recited them together under the hazelnuts tree at
Oaks Avenue:
“Cultivo una rosa blanca en junio como en enero”
While we collected hazelnuts... “para el amigo sincero que me da su mano franca”
... and we gyrated together holding hands, drawing a star-shaped windmill... “y
para aquel que me arranca el corazón con que vivo”
We repeated always these verses... “cardo ni ortiga cultivo cultivo una rosa blanca”.
They was instants... and eternities... that kept this maple that is looming, today, in
my window, that it make me come back to my infancy and to remember Alejo, lying
down on the grass after run, with extended arms, to both sides, and watching the
sky, he ask me: - Where is the soul?
And I answer him: - Between the ribs... I think...
He smiled me and I smiled him.
Cecilia F. Badaille