Editor’s Note: This text is available in English and Portuguese. Click “Español” to read in Portuguese.
Lavender Roses
I leave home with the feeling that I may end up not going to work after all if I happen to find a flower along the way. Instead, at the sight of its beauty and power, I’ll let myself be taken by a different calling: contemplation.
It’s raining, which blurs the horizon and makes the city rather melancholy. One would think today is Sunday, but no, two is the right number: today is the second day of the week.
I step lightly about the drenched sidewalks, trying to preserve my shoes’ polished appearance; I’ve never trusted anyone with dirty shoes. My black umbrella, precociously aged by my neglect, protects my hair and my throat from catching an occasional cold.
I try to pay attention to the day’s melody. Indeed, for when we are attentive, we can hear in our heads the day’s song, a melody that brings up from our unconscious a surprising message, much like those found in a fortune cookie.
No sign of any flower, much less a rose. My subconscious radio must be suffering interference from the rain and isn’t playing a single note today—a gloomy day, conducive to hopes of finding lavender-colored roses.
I head to work. I walk on, looking for roses that would never bloom on a Monday, since roses seldom survive the weekend’s annoyance of dogs and kids running loose around the buildings in my well-kept neighborhood. I walk on, persistent in my strange form of contemplation, certain of noticing everything around me, full of a sacred hope.
Dreams abound, as do storms and hungry children everywhere, and I don’t pay attention to all those dreams. Some sweet old people still try to break away from their families’ madness; they go to nursing homes and try all forms of mental escapism. In the nursing homes, the elderly revisit a past where pit bulls didn’t exist and children played picking off the petals of a daisy: “…loves me, loves me not…” A world where children played.
I’m still looking for that rose. I still dream of that sacred moment when I’ll play hide-and-seek. I’ll throw open my fears, I’ll plant a garden of lavender roses in my yard and water them sparingly. I’ll dream big. I’ll open the window; I’ll face the sun. Or I’ll open the window and face the rain. I’ll open the window and find the moon.
Here I am, in the middle of my own road. I look at life as a story full of possibilities that one day I’ll tell my kids, my dogs, my menopause, and my wrinkles. Wrinkles like etched lavender roses; like flower petals and thorns, clean shoes, and threads from an old umbrella; like raindrops and moonlight baths. Expression lines on the face of a generation that keeps walking and searching, insistently looking for something: wrinkles of a generation that has averted the sun.
Rendezvous
at three in the morning
Eshu arrives, naked
I sleep peacefully.
Chimera
It was all this talk of heaven
that didn’t let me
live my life.
Law of Blood
I grew up afraid of roosters. Grandma Benedita raised chickens, but the roosters, more aggressive and menacing, ruled the roost. Domestic violence was common in the coop. Grandma was a Christian; for her, God was love, and meanness was something from the devil. In my child’s mind, that applied to the birds too. The first time I made an offering to Eshu, I wasn’t fully there. I hadn’t overcome my fear of roosters, and maybe I was unconsciously thinking of the false liturgy on animal sacrifice; I didn’t go through with my offering. The second time I fed Eshu, I was in control of my thoughts, there was no trace in my mind of that false bird machismo. I bought a big, older rooster, slender, hypnotic. Black feathers, some in dark blue tones. Fascinating and black, like me.
It happened on the seventh day. I didn’t fear my own strength. The rooster looked like an eagle, and I sensed its energy. It didn’t crow, didn’t even stir. By then, I was ready to slash it. As soon as the blood gushed out, I was in love. It was blood of my blood.
Translated by Cristina Ferreira Pinto-Bailey
