I've reached the point where I see it every noon. The road is the same as yesterday. Wide. It is interrupted by vertical lanes. Some end in dead ends. No parallel. It is not threatened by uncontrolled construction. Its only limit, the hill to the west of the city. Tidy. The single-family homes in a row, with the gardens subservient to the slowdown of an upcoming siesta.
He's here again. He's waiting. Sometimes I'm afraid he's waiting for me. Two in the afternoon. Two hours after twelve. In an hour it'll be three. Two hours before we decide it's afternoon. A strange body, shoulders hunched in constant deliberation, a distended belly, and a look of indecision about the direction he'll take permanently imprinted on his expression. A toddler trapped in a middle-aged man's body.
I avoid him. For how long? I count the years that have separated me since I first met him. When I was discovering my own path. I encounter him in my memory and discover gaps interrupted by sparkling colors. I can barely catch the signs of his form. He emerges smiling, covered in the indifference and cruelty of a prolonged adolescence. I try to distinguish the dominant color. To pick up the thread from the beginning. To arrive here, in front of the house with the lime tree and the chrysanthemums or to that low single-family house with the refugee width and what is left of the blue pre-war paint that only counts absences. That is where he stops today. I try to guess which of all these houses his daily journey ends at.
I found myself here and I have chosen this path to return. I wandered for months in the noise of the small provincial town that squeezes all its arrogance into intentions, orientations, directions and dreams in an eternal circle. I did not remember the path. I discovered it. I never come, I always return. Faced with flight, escape. And I always meet him. He never comes. He always returns or ponders joyfully and undecidedly at the edge of the road.
I never come. I always return. I never saw him finish his journey. It's as if we joined, together, in an endless "go." He circles his agonizing wanderings with a smile. It fills me with guilt. September. How many autumns, I don't count them, I only remember my own return. I turn towards the settlement that hangs over the entrance to the city. A descent and a winter. If I turn left, I come. If I turn right, I leave. To where?
photo jplenio, https://pixabay.com
