When I have a fever, I read poetry. Because words cut deeper, the metallic words melt inside me like daggers that no longer cut but embrace me, lull me.
A few days ago, I was in bed with a fever and I was reading Aleixandre:
Black Heart
Enigma or blood from other past lives, supreme interrogation that speaks to me before my eyes, a sign I do not understand by the light of the moon. Black blood, aching heart that from afar sends uncertain beats, hot gasps, heavy summer vapor, river in which I do not sink, that passes without light like silence, without perfume or love. Sad story of a body that exists as a planet exists, as the moon exists, the abandoned moon, a bone that still has a glow of flesh. Here, here on earth lying among some reeds, among the present green, among the always fresh, I see that sorrow or shadow, that lymph or specter, that mere suspicion of blood that does not pass. Black heart, origin of pain or the moon, heart that once beat in some hands. Kiss that sailed through red veins, body that clung to a vibrant wall!
I really like Aleixandre, I like the fever in his words.
And so, with the book on my chest and my hands on it, I fell asleep. As sleep came, I imagined that I was a desolate country with a mountain that was not made of earth but of paper and ink: a mountain of letters, of words, of poetry. Sometimes it happens to me – especially when I’m surrounded by people and noise – I get lost.
Suddenly, I fix my gaze on something, and it’s like getting hooked. I think there is a silver hook inside my brain that catches things that shine and float in front of my eyes.
A few days ago, I got lost in Julia’s eyes. While she was texting to me, I was looking at a photo of her.
I fixed my gaze on her pupils, and suddenly they became two black holes with all that gravity that absorbed me.
When I was inside her blue eyes, from there I could see that her irises were two worlds, also blue, like the typical photo of the Earth in all the encyclopedias.
I continued my journey through her eyes and suddenly felt the touch of her cheeks, which I have never touched or kissed, but I felt them, soft. Soft like the touch of the feathers of a dove, white and calm. Her freckles on her arms turned into rose bushes where I was suddenly sliding my touch, and I hurt my fingers, and it was my red blood that flowed through her hands and gave the red color to those sharp nails like red daggers that cut into pieces everything they touch.
With each blink she gave, I saw that stars, almost like frost, floated like particles of dust in the light, stirred by the air of her eyelids’ movement.
– Oh, no, you are sick, You need to drink warm drinks. Tea with lemon, ginger and sugar helps me in such situations. And also keep your feet warm. Take your medicine and get more sleep.
And so, I suddenly appeared, listening to her words inside herself. I became the echo of her echo; inside her ears, I was the noise of a hummingbird’s wings, and I could hear myself while imagining how her voice would be. I listened and empathically said, “Yep, I’m doing all of these things,” because I truly was doing them and wanted her to say it to me, as I was the one writing the script. I had become a tiny being that dictated every word to her, a diminutive ventriloquist directing an immense doll.
Then I passed through a tunnel full of sounds located in her throat. I jumped over her vocal cords, and the tone of her voice changed. Everything there was warm; the roof of her mouth was like the memory I have of her photos of the moon: red.
And from there, I climbed up to her head. It was like reaching the sky, and the sky was an attic with clocks like those of Dalí, melting, with photos, a bundled-up cat, iridescent butterflies, lamps, immense trees, ports and boats lined up, disappearing into the horizon, colorful fans in women in a waiting room at an airport, memories enclosed in bubbles, inside palaces, planes taking off, sensations wrapped in spider webs, and immense spiders carrying a multitude of pasts clinging to each leg, poisoned pasts, faces, perfumes scattered over letters, horses, ink, a car sliding on a road, a pair of naked, silent lovers in a bed, a river dancing with a forest, a dog barking at a child running to his mother and crying, a campfire burning quietly to ashes at the edge of an abyss of mirrors.
I swam among the nebulas of her thoughts, floated among so many objects that struck me, and at the same time, I kept seeing the worlds in her eyes, the rosebushes on her arms that made my touch bleed, the warmth of her throat, and the redeeming sky of her palate. I kept telling her, “Of course, I’ll listen to you,” because I truly did, and I saw myself again, a small ventriloquist in her head, all of us and me wrapped in the nebula of her mind.
Finally, I reached a blank, calm, luminous space, where on a very white paper, my name was written in black letters.
And I saw her photo again, returned to her pupils and her eyes, returned to her words.
“I’ll listen to you,” I repeated, because I believe I always listen to her and heed her.
Then I was sweating cold, trembling, exhausted.
Even so, I felt like the luckiest man in the world, felt that she cared about me. I let myself be carried away to a green field of fresh grass, to the touch of white sand, to the feel of water flowing over my body.
I felt a shiver.
I stayed silent, looking at her photo, played some of my music for her.
Even so, I feared she would find, deep in my mind, that folded paper, with her name also written in uppercase letters and black ink.
Her name written there a thousand times.